Nell's Adventures in Babysitting
by celrock
Summary: The sequel to The Power to Talk to Babies. Nell is off on her week long villager's internship, as she must care for not only her own two little sisters, but the boys of Stu and Didi Pickles with Peter's help. Learn how it all goes, from her point of view.
1. Introduction, The First Night

Nell's Adventures in Babysitting

Summary: The sequel to The Power to Talk to Babies. Nell is off on her week long villager's internship, as she must care for not only her own two little sisters, but the boys of Stu and Didi Pickles with Peter's help. Learn how it all goes, from her point of view.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Rugrats, Madeline, or Sofia the First, they're the property of their original creators. I only own any OC's you don't recognize, like Zack and his aunt Celeste, while Peter is owned by TCKing12, Savanna, Samaya, and their family are owned by DemonAloisTrancy, Jesse is owned by Silvergunner, Rosie is owned by Nairobi-harper, and Nell and Sabrina O'Mally are owned by theblindwriter95.

Chapter 1, Introduction, The First Night

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

It is me, Princess Hellen, here with my first entry on my week long villager's internship, as I see to caring for the young toddlers of three-year-old Tommy Pickles, and two-year-old Dil Pickles, with the help of King Peter Albany of the Confederacy, as I care for both, the Pickles boys and my own little sisters, five-year-old twins, Sabrina and Madeline O'Mally. Now granted, I've been taking care of my younger sisters for a long time, but seeing that I'm more familiar with little girls than boys, I see my week ahead being quite the challenge.

I can't recall everything that happened that fine Saturday leading up to the start of my internship, except for sitting in my father's throne room and receiving the assignment, getting this notebook and pen I am using at this time before I head off to bed in the master bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, and see to calling it a night. And believe me when I say, I am more than ready, to call it a night. I was already tired when Peter was finished with his meeting with my father, that we rounded up his charges, which included not only Tommy and Dil, but siblings, four-year-old Chuckie and three-year-old Kimi Finster, twins, three-year-old Phil and Lil DeVille, and two-year-old, almost three-year-old, Zack Wehrenberg. We all piled into the limo, Peter handed his driver the portal key to get us from Enchancia back to Yucaipa, California, which is where I and my two younger sisters would be stationed for the next week, and seeing that we had a long drive ahead of us, my younger sisters and the seven toddlers accompanying us, all had a good idea. Why not all of us take a nap. One of our charges however, had come down with a bad cold and had one heck of a fever by this point, so it was no wonder we were heading home. I caught me a nap, until I noticed we weren't moving anymore, and Peter shook me awake.

"We're at Boingo Burger, what do you want?" Peter asked me.

I rubbed my sleepy eyes and looked at him, a bit confused.

"Boingo Burger? Is that some, fast food joint?" I asked sleepily, trying to adjust to the light, realizing I was still in Peter's limo.

"Yes Hellen." Peter replied.

"I'll, have what you're having." I replied, very unfamiliar with the place, though I could tell we were getting takeout orders, seeing he hadn't attempted to awaken any of the sleeping toddlers surrounding me, my two younger sisters included.

"That would be, the Boingo Burger, though they put a ton of toppings on it, including dill pickles. While the kids are asleep, so there's no mix ups, do you like dill pickles on your burger? Yes or no?" Peter asked.

"I love pickles." I quietly replied with a smile.

"Any other toppings you don't want, or do you want the burger as it comes?" Peter asked.

"I'll take it as it comes. And what are you planning to order for the kids?" I asked.

"Nine whacky meals, which come with chicken nuggets and French fries, along with a toy in each meal." Peter said.

"Sounds good. I know Sabrina and Madeline will enjoy that. Are we feeding all of these kids, or just my sisters, Tommy and Dil?" I asked.

"I received a text on my phone on our way here from Kira, Chuckie and Kimi's mother. She stated that she, Chas, Betty and Howard, the parents of Phil and Lil, and Zack's aunt Celeste, were all heading to see a movie, and they'd be by Stu and Didi's later on tonight to pick up the kids, so they asked if I would feed them. I'm tired myself, so I asked my driver to swing by the window at Boingo Burger. I'm not one to feed the kids fast food takeout very often, but with Tommy being sick, and the fact that nobody bothered me and Roland during our meeting, I thought everybody deserved a treat." Peter explained.

"Sounds good to me, especially since while I'm sure I'll fix a lot of meals over the course of the week in Mr. and Mrs. Pickles kitchen, I'm pretty tired myself, so good starting meal for this venture." I said.

"I thought so." Peter said.

"We're almost up to the speaker box where you order Peter." The driver called towards the back of the limo.

"I'd better go take care of that." Peter said, giving me a pat on the shoulder and walking back up towards the front of the limo to deliver the orders to his driver, while I sat back in my seat and relaxed.

A few minutes later, we had our orders and the limo went towards the Pickles residence. Once we got there, I saw to shaking Madeline and Sabrina awake, who were sitting next to me, while Peter saw to waking up everybody else.

"We're here girls." I said.

Madeline opened one sleepy eye and glared at me.

"At home Nelly?" Madeline asked sleepily.

"No Maddie, at Tommy and Dil's. We're spending the week here." I reminded her.

"No! I wanna go home! I want my Elsa doll! I wanna watch My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic!" Madeline cried at the top of her lungs.

I gave her a hug and gently patted her on the back.

"Hush, hush. I packed your Elsa doll, and you know you can watch My Little Pony at Tommy and Dil's house." I said.

Luckily, this got Madeline to calm down, while Sabrina also awoke, and we saw to getting everybody out of the car and heading inside, using a set of keys that Peter had to get inside. The driver bid us farewell, and the limo disappeared out of sight, as we all headed inside, I went and put everybody's food on the table and started looking around for the dinner plates and sippy cups, while Peter placed a sleeping Tommy down on the living room couch, and everybody else came into the kitchen and took seats at the table. Peter came in shortly after that and saw I was having trouble finding the dinner plates, so he escorted me to the correct cabinet, and soon afterwards, we had everybody served, just as I heard some feet tottle into the kitchen. I went on ahead and dished up Tommy's plate and laid it out, in the event he awoke a little while later, though knowing he was sick, I wasn't sure how hungry he'd be, seeing I did vaguely recall him not being interested in the soup he was fed at the castle earlier that day at first. Luckily though, I thought to have Sabrina sit across from him, figuring he'd probably eat, if for no other reason, to impress his lady friend, not making her worry if nothing else, and sure enough, once he glanced in her direction, he picked up a chicken nugget on his plate and started nibbling on it.

Dinner was mostly uneventful, except I had to clean off Dil, who had managed to cover himself in barbecue sauce, and Phil, who decided it would be more fun to wear his French fries in his hair than eat them. At least there was no arguing at the table, and all of the kids more or less, finished the meals we got them, and the chocolate shakes Peter had gotten all of them to go with their dinner.

"How would you kids like to watch a movie until it's time for your parents and gardiens to come pick you up?" Peter asked.

Everybody shouted in excitement about getting to do this.

"So what movie will it be?" I asked.

"Reptar!" Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, Kimi, and Zack all shouted in unison.

"The Goober Movie! I want The Goober Movie!" Dil cried.

"No! Frozen!" Sabrina cried.

"Yeah! Frozen!" Madeline cried right after her.

"Then Reptar it is then." Peter said, heading off into the living room to get things ready.

I looked over at my younger sisters to see them looking disappointed.

"Now girls, Reptar did get the most votes. Come on, you never know, you might like it! And we're going to be here all week. I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunities to watch Frozen." I said with a smile, trying to cheer them up a bit.

They smiled a little and went into the living room, with Dil tagging along behind them, and I saw to cleaning up the dishes, and wiping up anything that spilled on the chairs and floor around where the kids were eating. Peter came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, and pulled out candy from the pantry, the chocolates that look like dinosaurs.

"Thought the kids might like to snack on some Reptar bars while they watch their Reptar movie in the other room." Peter said.

"Well as long as they don't make a mess, I'm okay with it." I said.

"No worries, they're allowed to have snacks in the living room, it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner that isn't eaten in there. The same goes for hot milk, but we'll worry about that for Tommy and Dil after the other parents come to pick up their kids, which should be in another hour from now, based on what time it's getting to be." Peter said, carrying the bag of Reptar bars back into the living room, while I saw to rencing off the last plate and putting it into the dish washer.

I then went to get instructions from Peter on where they kept the dish washing detergent, and how to start up the unit, just as I heard a buzzing sound.

"What was that?" I asked.

"The doorbell. Mind answering it while I get the dish washer started, and see to feeding their dogs, Spike and Spiffy, who are outside in the backyard?" Peter asked.

"Not at all." I said, heading to the door and answering it to find a dark haired Japanese woman standing there.

"I'm here to pick up Chuckie and Kimi." The woman said.

"And you are…" I said.

"Kira, Chuckie and Kimi's mom." Kira said.

"Sure thing, they're in the living room, watching a Reptar movie." I said, escorting Kira to the living room, where everybody was still awake, intently watching the movie.

Kira went over to her two kids, gently patting Chuckie and Kimi on the heads to get their attention.

"Come on you two, it's time to go." Kira said.

Chuckie and Kimi got up and grabbed their mother's hand, as I led them back to the door.

"Before you go, I'm Hellen, I'll be helping Peter this next week with the kids. However, Tommy has come down with a terrible cold, so not sure if one, I'd recommend you come back for anymore playdates until he's feeling better, and two, just in case they've caught it…" I said.

"Oh I know. Stuff is going around preschool all of the time. Chuckie had an ear infection a couple of weeks ago." Kira said.

"Well I hope that's not what Tommy has.

"I hope not either and I hope he's better soon too. Also, thank you for watching the kids today." Kira said.

"Not a problem." I said, seeing them out the door.

Curious about this Reptar movie they were all watching, I went and took a seat in the living room in a vacated easy chair, and decided to watch some of the movie with the kids, just as I felt little hands and feet crawl into my lap. I looked away from the TV to see that my little sister Madeline was snuggling with me. Unfortunately, our snuggle time was short-lived, as I heard the doorbell ring again.

"I need to go get that." I said, putting Madeline down in the chair.

"No!" Madeline cried.

"I'll be right back, I promise." I said, heading into the entry hall and answering the door to find a tall brunette woman standing there, carrying a white cane in her hands.

"Hello, I am Hellen O'Mally." I said.

"Hi, I'm here to pick up my nephew Zack. I'm Celeste Wehrenberg, his aunt." The lady said.

"Oh! Sure thing, come on in." I said, stepping aside to let Celeste walk through the door.

Once it was closed behind her, I heard her call for Zack.

"Zack! Aunty Celeste is here!" Celeste called.

Shortly afterwards, the blond toddler ran out of the living room towards his aunt, giving her a huge hug around the waste.

"I'm ready, but I'd really like to stay and watch the rest of the movie." Zack asked in a tiny innocent voice to his aunt.

Celeste knelt down to his level, a look of disappointment on her face.

"I'm sorry sweetie, we really need to be heading home, but you can watch the rest of the movie another time." She said, gently ruffling his hair and patting him on the shoulder.

"Okay." Zack said, as I came over to her.

"Just to let you know, Tommy has come down with a bad cold, so not sure what will be happening this next week." I said.

"Not to worry, I'll plan to leave Zack with Peter this next week after preschool." Celeste said.

"Actually, Peter is helping me this week." I said.

"Well, in that case, I'll talk to my boss at work and the other parents, and arrange to take the kids after school each day." She said.

"Okay." I replied, escorting Celeste and her nephew to the door.

"Tell Tommy I hope he feels better." Celeste said.

"I will." I said, seeing them out the door.

No sooner had she and Zack left and I had gone back into the living room, when the doorbell rang again. Peter had come back into the living room at that point to watch the movie with the kids, but because I hadn't had a chance to sit down, I went back to the door to see a very muscular brunette standing before me.

"Here to pick up the pups." The lady said.

"Let me guess, you're Phil and Lil's mother." I said.

"Yep, I'm Betty DeVille, and you are…" Betty asked.

"I'm Hellen O'Mally, I'll be helping Peter watch the kids this next week while Mr. and Mrs. Pickles are out of town." I said.

"Okay." Betty said, walking quickly into the living room, where she ran up to her twins, who were still intently enjoying the movie.

"Come on kids, time to go." Betty said, grabbing up her two three-year-old children in each arm and carrying a screaming Phil and a crying Lil out of the living room.

"Now come on kids we gotta be heading home." Betty called out over her kids crying and screaming.

"We wanna watch Reptar!" Phil and Lil screamed.

"Maybe if Tommy is better later on in the week, you can come back and watch the rest of it. Or maybe you can watch it this next week at Zack's place." I said.

Luckily, this got her twins to calm down enough so I could have a word with their mother before she saw to leaving, since I wasn't sure if Peter would come to find anybody during the week.

"Just to let you know, Tommy is sick. Celeste Wehrenberg, Zack's aunt has already offered to take the kids after school this week. I found this out though after Kira picked up her kids." I said, before Betty cut me off.

"Don't worry about it I work with Chazzy at The Java Lava. We've got it under control. Thanks for watching the pups." Betty said.

"Not a problem." I said, seeing her and her twins out the door.

I was glad to have that woman out of my sight. She seems nice, but somewhat intemidating, with her loud voice and muscular body, I wouldn't want to make that woman angry if I can help it. Celeste and Kira didn't seem nearly as intimidating, and I felt more comfortable dealing with them if I had to give them a bad report about their kids than I would Betty. Anyhow, I then headed back into the living room, when I glanced up at a clock on the wall to see it was growing late, so strolled over to the television to take the DVD out of the player, to press the eject button on the unit to find the player was empty, and the movie was still playing.

"What the…" I said, glancing over at Peter, who had picked up the remote off of the coffee table and had it pointed at the TV.

"It's a made for TV Reptar movie that's on Hulu." Peter said.

"Oh." I replied, as he switched off the TV, mmuch to everybody's disappointment.

"Hey! Turn Reptar back on!" Tommy screamed, running over to Peter and trying to wrestle the remote out of his hands.

"No Tommy, it's bedtime, you can watch the rest of the movie tomorrow." Peter said.

"No! I wanna watch the rest of it now, and I'm not going to bed until I do!" The three-year-old protested.

"Does this mean we can watch Frozen now?" Madeline asked.

"Nope, it's time for you two to go to bed too." I said.

"But… But… But…" Sabrina and Madeline cried in unison, running up to me and giving me the bunny nose.

"The bunny nose, is not going to work tonight, not even the double bunny nose. Tell you all what, if you all go nicely to bed, everybody can watch something tomorrow. Tommy, you can finish your Reptar movie, and Madeline and Sabrina, you can watch Frozen. And Dil, if there's time, we'll put on that Goober movie you wanted, whoever that is." I said.

"The most annoying goafer on the planet." I heard Tommy mutter, as he, Dil, Sabrina and Madeline headed upstairs.

"Come on, let's go see to showing your sisters to their room, and I'll have you help me get Tommy and Dil's hot milk ready while we let the two boys play for a few minutes in their room to calm down." Peter said, as we followed the four toddlers upstairs, and I saw to getting out Sabrina and Madeline's nightgowns, and led them to where they'd be sleeping.

"You two will be sleeping in here." I said, leading them to the room across the hall from where Tommy and Dil's room was, that I later found out from Peter use to belong to their paternal grandfather Lou when he still lived here.

Peter helped Tommy and Dil get ready for bed, while I did the same with Sabrina and Madeline, and then, we let the four kids play for a few minutes upstairs while Peter and I headed downstairs to get Tommy and Dil's hot milk, vitamins and floride ready.

"Aren't Tommy and Dil getting too old for baby bottles?" I asked, seeing the two bottles before me on the kitchen counter.

"Yes, but their mom let's them have a bottle before bedtime, and I'll let them have one before nap time. They still get a morning bottle if they spend the night at Zack's, but that's a whole other story. Now, both boys get regular milk, but Dil likes vanilla in his, while Tommy prefers Ovaltine." Peter explained, putting everything out on the counter for me to mix together and heat up in the microwave.

He then showed me their vitamins and florride, showing me the piece of paper stating how much Dil should get, versus how much Tommy should get, as Tommy gets more florride than Dil, simply because he was older.

"Why not just have them brush their teeth? That's what I have Sabrina and Madeline do." I said.

"The florride is for extra protection, plus, Tommy and Dil can be very stubborn about brushing their teeth, especially if they're not feeling very well, or they're very tired and cranky, so this ensures their teeth stay healthy, and gives them extra protection, if brushing their teeth twice a day does happen." Peter explained.

"Okay." I said, filling the cerrenges with the medicines, that we'd soon take upstairs, and give to the boys.

A few minutes later, we came upstairs to find Sabrina was playing house, pretending Dil and Madeline were her baby and Tommy was the daddy.

"Awe, how cute!" I said, looking at this cute display.

"Look kids, Aunt Nell came to visit!" Sabrina said, escorting me into Tommy and Dil's room, where they were playing.

"Well, Aunt Nell says, it's time for bed." I said.

"Awe." All of the kids cried in unison, just as Tommy let out a sneeze.

"Here Tommy, let's get you cleaned up." I said, grabbing a tissue off of his nightstand, and wiping his nose.

At that moment, Peter walked into the room.

"So, who's ready for a bedtime story?" Peter asked.

"Me! Me! Me!" Madeline cried, jumping up and down in excitement.

"Can I read it to you?" Peter asked.

"We want Nell to read to us, right Nell?" Sabrina asked me.

"Girls, if you don't mind, I'd like to read to Tommy and Dil tonight while they have their hot milk." I said.

"But, Peter has never read to us before." Madeline said.

"Oh come on girls, give me a chance. Tommy and Dil know I'm a pretty good reader, right boys?" Peter asked.

"You're better than grandpa." Dil commented.

"Why's that?" Sabrina asked.

"Yeah, why is that?" I asked, sitting down in the rocking chair in Tommy and Dil's room.

"Probaby because I can finish reading an entire story without falling asleep in the middle." Peter said.

Tommy and Dil nodded their heads in agreement, which was all the proof I needed.

"Come on girls, if you two give Peter a chance tonight, while I read to Tommy and Dil, we'll switch tomorrow night." I said.

"Will you read our Frozen book to us?" Madeline asked.

"Sure I will." Peter said with a smile, leading my sisters across the hall.

Luckily when I pulled out their pajamas, I thought to leave the Frozen book in plain sight on the dresser, so it could be easily found. I then turned to Tommy and Dil, who both brought me a book to read. Tommy handed me a book with the green dinosaur on the cover with a title that read, Reptar Goes to Mars, while Dil handed me one with some orange creature on the cover that said, Goodnight Goober.

"Okay boys, let's take your vitamins and florride, and then you can have your hot milk while I read your books to you." I said.

To my surprise, both boys took their medicine without fussing. I'm not sure if it was because they were tired, not up for arguing, or if I was watching after them, not wishing to look bad in front of Sabrina in Tommy's case, but just the same, I was pretty tired at this point, so was greatful this task went smoothly. I soon gave them their bottles, and read Tommy his Reptar book first. Afterwards, I red the Goodnight Goober book to Dil, and got them both, tucked into their beds.

"Goodnight boys." I said, blowing them a kiss from the door, making sure the Reptar nightlight on the dresser was turned on, when Tommy spoke up.

"Mommy always sings to us at night too." Tommy said.

"Well, what does she sing?" I asked.

"That beautiful dreamer song." Dil said from his toddler bed.

"Hmmm, I don't think I know that song. Will you settle for some recorded music tonight?" I asked, walking over to the boom box on the dresser and finding a stack of CD's next to the player.

"We've got, Lullabies by Sherry Berry, a CD of Reptar on Ice, and something called, Music Class Practice CD's." I said, naming off the titles of the albums that lay before me.

"Sherry Berry!" Tommy cried, sniffling in the process.

Without saying another word, I put on the lullabies by Sherry Berry CD, found the play button on the unit, started up the music, and left the room, closing the door behind me so the music wouldn't awaken my sisters across the hall. To my surprise, I peaked into their room to see they, too, had fallen asleep. Wondering where Peter had gone, and noticing how familiar the voice of Sherry Berry sounded, but not being able to place where I had heard her voice before, I decided not to think much of it, heading back downstairs to find Peter in the living room, looking through the top shelf of DVD's, in search of something to watch. I sat down on the couch, to which he turned his head in my direction, holding something I didn't recognize in his hand.

"So, how did it go putting Tommy and Dil to bed?" Peter asked.

"Much smoother than I thought it would, though I do think it did partially have something to do with Tommy being sick, and both boys being tired from the big day they had at the castle." I said.

"Yeah when Tommy's not feeling well, I can usually get him to bed with no problem. Heck, there's even been times when he's the one who falls asleep in the middle of story time at that rate." Peter said, coming over to the couch with the movie he wanted to watch.

"How did my sisters do?" I asked.

"Great! No sooner had I finished reading them the Frozen book, when they were snuggled up together beneath their blanket, and falling asleep. I think they were tired from the day they had together as well." Peter said.

"So, what movie did you want to watch?" I asked.

"Some movie I found on Stu and Didi's bookshelf called, Lady Sings the Blues. From the back of the DVD case jacket, it claims it's about the famous jazz singer, Billie Holiday, and looking at the plastic on the wrapper, it's never been opened. Not sure when Stu and Didi got this, as it doesn't sound like something they'd watch, my guess is either Lou had it here and didn't take it with him when he moved out, or Lulu probably got it as a present for them, and they just, hadn't gotten a chance to watch it, mainly because this movie is by far, not for young children." Peter said.

"I see. Who's Lulu?" I asked.

"Lou's second wife, who he met after he moved out." Peter said, tearing up the original wrapping off of the DVD and placing it into the player.

I was all for heading off to bed, but it was obvious that Peter wasn't ready to go to bed yet, and he was in a way, my mentor for this week, and partner in this adventure of babysitting, so decided to be polite and watch the movie with him. However, as the movie went on, I only hoped none of the kids would come downstairs and see what we were watching, since stuff about drugs and things that I surely wouldn't want Sabrina and Madeline to see came up. The movie was long, but it did have some good jazz music in it, and it was nice getting to do something with Peter, just the two of us to wind down, before we headed off to bed. The movie eventually ended, and Peter put it away.

"Well I'm ready to head to bed, how about you?" Peter asked.

"But where will we sleep?" I asked.

"I figured you could sleep in the master bedroom, and I'll sleep at the opposite end of the hall from you in their extra guest room." Peter said.

"Works for me." I said, heading up the stairs and entering the door at the top right-hand side of the stairs, where I saw Peter had put my overnight bag on top of their made up bed.

Peter then saw to getting ready for bed and heading off to bed himself, and once he was finished in the bathroom, I saw to doing the same. I then headed into Stu and Didi's room, where I slipped into the red nightgown I had brought with me, knelt down by the side of the bed, and said my prayers.

"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, oh I forget the last part. Anyway, dear God, give me the strength to help me get through this week. Please, don't let my emotions get in the way of being the best babysitter I can be to my sisters, and especially to Tommy and Dil, while their parents are out of town. Amen." I said, just as I heard a phone ring from Peter's room.

Curious, I got up to go see what was going on.

"Oh, I'm sorry, the boys are sound asleep, but thanks for calling to check in and let me know you two made it to your hotel safe and sound." I heard Peter say into the phone from the opposite side of his door.

He was obviously talking to Mr. and Mrs. Pickles who had most likely, called to tell their kids goodnight. Hopefully they can call earlier in the evening the next night, and Peter thinks to tell them that I'm watching the kids too, since I was obviously brought on bored long after they had left for their trip. I was too tired to try to go fool with it right then and there, and looked like Peter was pretty heavily wrapped up into talking with them on the phone, I didn't wish to interrupt. So with that, I think it's high time, I see to ending my first entry, and heading off to bed, as while tomorrow is Sunday, when you're taking care of young children, anything is possible, so better get me some sleep while I can.

End of Nell POV

And with that, she closed the notebook, put it in her overnight bag, turned out the light, pulled back the covers, climbed into bed, and drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note: And there you have it, the first chapter. Hopefully, I'll have more chapters up tomorrow, and oh yeah, I did make a tiny reference to the season 9 Rugrats episode, Hold the Pickles towards the beginning of this story.


	2. Sunday, Boys and Beauty, Don't Mix

Author's Note: My right hand is hurting a little bit, so apologies if anything is a bit off. Also, I'm keeping fingers crossed that I can get this chapter up, without my computer giving me grief, as it attempted to be a pill when editing the first chapter, and let's just say, I was very thankful for Microsoft Office Word Recovery in the end. Anyway, let's move on, to the next chapter of this story. Also, I'd like to thank one of the reviewers on the last chapter, for giving me the correct spelling for Helen's name, I'll see that it's spelled correctly in future chapters.

Chapter 2, Sunday, Boys and Beauty, Don't Mix

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

Well it has finally come and gone, my first full day of watching over Tommy, Dil, and my younger sisters, Madeline and Sabrina, along with the help of Peter. If there's one lesson I can take from today's adventures, is that boys and beauty, don't mix, despite of what some old photographs might say otherwise. Though before I explain that story, let's just go, from the very beginning of the day. Surprisingly, I, myself slept relatively peacefully in the master bed of Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, and nobody awoke during the night, needing my care. Morning came though, and it was no surprise, that I was awakened by the familiar little hands of my two younger sisters, trying to drag me out of bed.

"Come on Nell, wake up! You promised us pancakes the next time you'd be in charge of making us breakfast!" Madeline yelled in my ear.

I sleepily opened my eyes and stared into her face, with its messy red hair lying all over the place.

"All right, I'm up, I'm up." I said sleepily, as I yawned and stretched, getting out of bed.

I pulled on my peach bath robe I had brought with me, and saw to leading the girls downstairs, when I found Peter in the hallway, with Tommy and Dil pulling at his pajama pants legs.

"Morning Peter, let me guess, you had a wake up call from two of our tiny tots." I said.

"Yes I did, complete with a poopy diaper thrown in my face, and sniffling in one ear." Peter replied, seeing to taking Tommy, who did have snot dripping down his face, and Dil, who was no longer wearing his diaper, only dressed in his red Goober nightshirt, down the hall to the bathroom to get them cleaned up and ready for the day.

"The girls and I are heading downstairs to get breakfast started. They're itching to have pancakes." I said, as Madeline and Sabrina ran down the stairs, and I sleepily followed behind them.

Turns out everybody was in the mood for pancakes, and luckily, the Pickles had all of the makings for them in the pantry. I let Madeline and Sabrina help me mix up the batter, while Peter went and had Tommy and Dil finish the Reptar movie in the living room while having morning bottles of hot milk, since he had seen that the Reptar TV series and made for TV movies, would be expiring on Hulu in just a few short days, plus, with Tommy being sick, and Dil being a bit young to be helping out in the kitchen, he felt it better that they not help with breakfast, so wanted to get something put on to keep them occupied. I did check to see how everybody wanted their pancakes, before we got to work. Dil wanted banana pancakes, Tommy wanted blueberry pancakes, while I already knew what Madeline and Sabrina wanted, chocolate-chip pancakes, with strawberries and chocolate cool whip on top. Peter and I had ours plain, with maple syrup on top, and he and I had orange juice, while Tommy and Sabrina had apple juice, and Madeline and Dil had cranberry juice, which they call red juice, because well, it's the color red.

Everybody enjoyed the pancakes, and after breakfast was consumed and cleaned up, Peter and I sat down at the kitchen table, and got started making a grocery list, since several items were starting to run out at the Pickles home, due to the fact that Peter was helping Stu get items packed to take off to his inventor's convention the day before yesterday, and well, yesterday was spent in Enchancia, leaving no time for grocery shopping. However, before we started writing up the list, when I got dressed for the day, I pulled out an old blue notebook I put into my stuff, that had a bunch of old recipes of dishes my late mother use to make for me when I was little, thinking my younger sisters, Tommy, Dil, and Peter might all enjoy some of these, in particular, my mom's famous, chetter mash potatoes. Boy did memories come flooding back, as I skimmed through the recipe book, jotting down all of the ingredients I'd be needing to pick up at the store for each recipe.

"Chetter mash potatoes? Never heard of these." Peter commented, glancing at the recipe I had the notebook open to in my hands.

"Yes, they're like chetter bake potatoes, only they're mash potatoes with cheese in them, and extra grated cheese on top for extra flavoring. My mother use to make these for me a lot, but especially if I had been having a bad day, or if I was sick with something other than a stomach bug, like a bad cold or something. This comfort food, always made me feel better." I said, blinking back some tears, as I started to miss my mother a little bit at that moment.

"You okay Helen?" Peter asked me, as I wiped a tear away from my eyes.

"Oh yes, I'm fine, just, got a little dust in my eyes is all." I said, just as I heard a scream from the living room that caught my attention.

"Stop!" I heard Tommy's voice scream, as I dashed out of the kitchen into the living room to see what was going on.

I couldn't believe what I saw. There, in the fenced in playpen towards the back of the living room, sat my makeup kit next to Madeline on the floor, who still had my red lipstick in her hand. And close to them on the floor was Tommy. I couldn't decide at that moment whether to be angry at my sisters for playing with my makeup kit without permission, or to stifle my laughter, as I looked at Tommy, now wearing one of Sabrina's sparkly blue dresses she brought with her, with his face all done up. There he was, covered in purple eye liner around the outside of his eyes, pink blush on his cheeks, and red lipstick on his lips. While I thought he looked adorable, as I saw Sabrina trying to put his short purple hair into a pink ribbon without much success, from the look on Tommy's face, I could tell he wasn't having any fun.

"Stop! That hurts!" Tommy cried, causing Sabrina to drop the ribbon to the floor.

"Girls? What's going on here?" I asked.

"We're just, making Tommy look pretty that's all." Madeline said, pointing to Tommy with the makeover still on his face.

"Madeline Elizabeth O'Mally, you know my makeup is off limits. And what made you think Tommy would want this done?" I asked, picking up my makeup bag off of the floor and taking the lipstick from Madeline's hand and stashing it into the bag.

"Sabrina said that Tommy looked terrible, so I decided to make him look pretty after finding this old picture." Madeline explained, pulling a box she had found over, and pulling a picture out of the box to show me.

"Let me see that please." I said, taking the picture from my little sister.

In the picture, it appeared to be a younger version of Tommy, wearing a yellow wig on his head, dressed in a blue party dress and shoes to match. It looked like the picture was taken at some show, as he had one of his legs tangled up in the cord of a microphone, appearing to have just fallen on the ground, showing a pair of lacy underpants.

"Awe, you're right Madeline, Tommy does look cute in this picture." I commented, only to glance over at Tommy, seeing a look of embarrassment spread across his face.

"Something wrong Tommy?" Sabrina asked him.

"I didn't like that picture, and I don't like it now!" Tommy screamed, trying to reach for the picture in my hand, nearly ripping it in half.

Before he could destroy it, I placed the picture back into the box and picked up the box of old pictures up off of the floor.

"What do you mean Tommy, you look great in that sparkly towel." Madeline said.

"Madeline, we putted him into a dress, member?" Sabrina asked.

"I know, but he's a boy, a Tom boy. Get it? His name's Tommy, and he's a boy? And while girls wear dresses, boys wear sparkly towels." Madeline commented.

"First of all girls, where did you find this box of old photos?" I asked.

"In a drawer in Tommy's mommy and daddy's room." Sabrina replied.

"Now girls, you both know you shouldn't play with my makeup without my permission. And while we may be using their house and staying here, there are some things, we shouldn't touch. The dresser drawers not emptied out in Mr. and Mrs. Pickles bedroom for us to use, should be left alone, though you've got me curious, Tommy, Dil, what is the story behind this picture?" I asked, showing the picture of younger Tommy in the dress and yellow wig again.

"I know nothing." Dil replied, continuing to build a block tower in a far corner of the playpen.

"You wouldn't no nothing Dilly, it happened before you were born." Tommy said.

"What happened?" I asked, scooping him out of the playpen along with my two younger sisters, as I saw to taking everybody upstairs, where we'd be getting Tommy cleaned up, and putting my makeup stuff, back where it belonged.

"The day my daddy and grandpa decided to make me wear a dress to go fishing. I didn't think I looked so good in a dress, and we never even went fishing. We went to this place where you dance and smile in front of lots of peoples. My cousin Angelica was there, and she sang terribly. I was entered under some name of Tonya, and mommy founded us. She was mad at my daddy and grandpa, took my wig off, and Angelica won the contest. Grandpa road home in a boat on the back of my uncle Drew and Angelica's car, and that was the lastest time I wore a dress, well, I member wearing one anyways, till today." Tommy explained, as I saw to wiping his face clean and taking the dress off.

"Well I'm sorry you had to go through that. Madeline and Sabrina like to play beauty parler, and seeing you're a little boy, I can understand why it's not something you'd really want to play." I said.

"No it's not! Plus, I've gots a headache and just, wanted to sit and play quietly with a puzzle, but they insisted on making me pretty." Tommy said.

"I'm sorry you don't feel good. After you're clean, how about you go take a nap until lunch time." I said.

He let out a huge yawn, as I helped him blow his nose, and I put him down for a nap. The rest of the morning, I had Sabrina and Madeline help me dust the bookshelf in the living room, and mop the kitchen floor as punishment for playing with my makeup without permission, as while making the pancakes, Peter did ask that I not spank anybody, mainly because Mr. and Mrs. Pickles were against such forms of punishment in their home, believing it to be too violent. Peter offered to go to the store, and he took Dil with him, so things would remain quiet so Tommy could rest, and allowing Dil to get some energy out of him, as he took him to the park on the way to the store. Come lunch time, I got Tommy up from his nap, and as soon as Peter and Dil returned, we all sat down and had a lunch of some tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

"I must ask, while it is Sunday, Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, they don't, you know, take their kids to church, do they?" I asked.

"No. In fact, well, they're half Christian, half Jewish, Stu's side of the family being Christian, while Didi's side is Jewish, but where religion is concerned, they're not very religious at all. Though when it comes to religious stuff, while they celebrate both, Christmas and Chanukah, and Easter and Passover, while they celebrate Chanukah and Passover religiously, Christmas and Easter, well the commercial aspect of the holiday is celebrated in this house, more so than the religious aspect." Peter explained.

"So they celebrate those holidays with Santa Clause, Christmas trees, eggs and Easter bunnies, not, well, you know." I said.

"Yep exactly." Peter replied, taking another bite of his grilled cheese sandwich.

I found it interesting that while Peter and I struck up conversation at the lunch table, the kids hardly spoke to one another, and Tommy still looked pretty tired, even after having a nap. I wasn't sure if maybe he was still angry at Madeline for making him play beauty parlor like that, but decided to not say anything, giving the kids time to cool off. After lunch, all of the kids took a nap, Tommy taking his second nap of the day, and his longest nap at that, as everybody else awoke before he did, and I sat quietly in the living room for a while, reading a book I had brought with me from home, a book Bianca recommended to me called Uncle Tom's Cabin. Later, Sabrina and Madeline watched Frozen, when Tommy was still not awake, but prior to that, Dil awoke first, getting the TV to watch the Goober movie he had been wanting to watch the previous day, but didn't get to, because it grew too late in the day to do so.

I couldn't help but think how ridiculous Tommy's father and grandfather were for entering him in some beauty contest, but I'd just, shake it off, seeing it happened a long time ago. The rest of the day was more or less, uneventful, as my younger sisters at a point in the afternoon, colored pictures in the Frozen coloring books they had brought with them, and I saw to making dinner, cooking the chicken Peter had picked up at the store, as he told me upon returning with the groceries, that chicken was on sale, along with my mom's famous, chetter mash potatoes, and Peter and I prepared some lovely roasted mushrooms, red bell peppers, broccoli and colliflower to go along with our meal. Peter tells me it's a vegetable medley that Mrs. Pickles will make a lot, and he knows Dil will eat that, so I followed her recipe, and saw to making it up. He also told me he picked up the ingredients for her famous chicken squares, which I agreed to make later on in the week, along side several recipes from my childhood, as a compromise, so everybody would get something they liked, but at the same time, some of us would try some new dishes as well.

Finally, it was time to eat dinner, and I'd see how I did making mom's chetter mash potatoes, for the first time in a couple of years. I couldn't bring myself to make these ever since she died, and it was hard at points, keeping a straight face in front of Peter, who was chopping up vegetables and putting them into the pan with salt and pepper on them, along with the other spices he used, before roasting them in the oven, which is when he let me know that the next day, Alliance Appliance would be coming to replace the filter in the fridge, along with a couple of other things they wanted done.

As I was preparing the potatoes, I kept recalling the last time I made them with my mother, shortly before she died. Regardless of how emotional this got to be at points, I got through it, and to my pleasant surprise come dinner time, the potatoes were a huge hit with everybody, and while we had leftover chicken and vegetables, there were no potatoes to put up, they were that good. Even I found them quite tasty, and they tasted just like how I remembered my late mother cooking them a few years ago.

"Well everyone, it's time for bed, you have school in the morning." I said, getting the last of the dinner dishes off of the table and giving each of my sisters a Reptar bar for dessert, since they had nicely cleaned their plates.

"I've gots school too." Tommy said, letting out a sneeze and a little cough.

I came over and felt his forehead, which still felt warm.

"I don't know about that Tommy, let's see how you're doing in the morning." I said, wiping his nose and having him and Dil take their vitamins and florride, and giving Tommy some Benidryl, or as I would call it with my younger sisters, the nose medicine.

Then came the dreadful part of the evening, and one I can't stand on Sunday nights before a new week of school began, but it had to be done. Yep that's right, bath time. Sabrina's not so bad, but Madeline has been a wreck at taking a bath, ever since her accident last summer.

"No bath! No bath!" Madeline screamed, as I saw to getting her undressed and taking her into the bathroom, where Peter was finishing up giving Tommy and Dil their baths.

I thought maybe having Madeline watch them take their baths and see how much fun they were having, might help out, but not this time. Then Peter gave me an interesting idea, after I explained to him what was going on.

"Why not, give her a sponge bath." Peter suggested.

"Great idea. Sabrina I know will want to take a regular bath though." I said.

"That's fine, I'll gladly help out with that." Peter said.

"You don't mind?" I asked.

"Oh no, I don't. I've given Lil Deville and Kimi Finster their baths before, just because I'm a guy, I don't have a problem bathing little girls if that's what you meant." Peter said.

"Well then it's settled. Next time, I'll bathe Tommy and Dil." I said, helping Sabrina get ready for her bath, while I saw to having Madeline stand by the sink, and take her sponge bath, while I washed her hair in the sink.

To my surprise, she did just fine with this method, and I'm glad I took Peter's suggestion. And Sabrina had fun in the tub, while Peter saw to reading the boys their book, giving them their hot milk and putting them to bed. I then saw to doing the same with Sabrina and Madeline, reading them a new book I had brought with me, Beauty and the Beast.

However, while I was pleased to introduce them to a new book from my childhood, Madeline kept interrupting the story with lots of questions.

"Why is the beast so mean?" Madeline asked not long after I started reading to them.

"If you stop interrupting Madeline, maybe we'll find out." I said, clearing my throat and continuing to read the story.

It took forever, but we finally got through reading the entire book. I kissed my sisters goodnight, got them tucked into bed, and went into the hallway where Peter had just finished putting Tommy and Dil to bed.

"So, how did it go for you?" I asked him quietly, as we headed downstairs to feed the dogs and get lights turned off.

"It went fine. Dil couldn't make up his mind of a book to read, but Tommy wanted his pirate book, so I read that to him, and then, while we were reading, I received a text from their mother, asking if it was okay for them to call and say goodnight, to which I said, yes, so Stu and Didi called, getting to tell the boys goodnight." Peter replied.

"Glad it worked out, since, I could overhear you on the phone late last night when I was getting ready for bed, and it sounds like they missed them." I said.

"Yep." Peter replied, shaking his head, as we saw to turning off the kitchen light.

"So, up for a movie tonight?" I asked.

"No, I think it's best if we hit the sack early tonight, since tomorrow is a school day, and Alliance Appliance could be here as early as nine in the morning." Peter said.

"Okay then, well, goodnight, and thank you for all of your help today." I said.

"Not a problem. Those mash potatoes you made, were totally out of this world!" Peter exclaimed with a smile.

I just quietly smiled back at him, as I went off to get ready for bed, and call it a night. It might have been somewhat of an emotional day for me, but I got through it, and we'd see how the rest of my week went on, as my adventures in babysitting twenty-four seven, continued.

End of Nell POV

And just as she did the night before, she put her notebook up in its special pocket, said her prayers, climbed into bed, and drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note: In this chapter, I made references to the season 1 Rugrats episode, Beauty Contest, as well as references to The Loud House episode, Toads and Tiaras, in particular, with that comment about the sparkly towel, which is what Lana calls a dress in the episode, and that comment Madeline made about Tommy being a tom boy, while it was pretty rude, it does sound like a pun Luan might say. For those of you who don't know, a tom boy is what people will often refer to little girls who like boyish type activities. And some of the foods presented in this chapter, my nephew's mother use to make for us, back before everything happened. My mom would even make the roasted vegetable medley, though she hasn't made it in a long time. Same holds true for chocolate-chip pancakes, which are my favorite way to eat pancakes. I also hope the chapter came out okay. At points while typing, my computer did this stupid thing where the cursor jumped up in the document to a point prior, screwing up my paragraphs, so I had to do some cutting and pasting, so I hope everything written here makes sense. Anyway, it's getting late, and almost time for a two hour marathon of Rugrats on The Splat from 2 AM to 4 AM this morning, so gonna go off and watch that now, but hopefully, I can get some more chapters up later on today, after I manage to get me some sleep, assuming my computer continues to cooperate, or if it messes up, it's nothing I can't easily fix, and I say that, since I had the paragraph issue to deal with while writing this chapter. Just, ug! Technology bites sometimes, but I'm not letting it win. One way or another, I will get this entire story posted, which, I'm hoping to make 10 chapters at most.


	3. Monday, Popcickle Brawl

Chapter 3, Monday, Popcickle Brawl

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

Today was Monday. Of course, we all know how Mondays can go at points, but I can't ever recall a Monday going nearly as horribly as I had today. I awoke, got my sisters, Tommy, and Dil up, and Peter was already up downstairs, fixing some breakfast. He made everybody scrambled eggs and bacon. I was amazed that he, a king of royalty, could fix such amazing food, but then he told me how he use to have to cook at points for the Confederacy army when they were fighting for their independence, so he got plenty of practice. Plus, he gave me a good lesson in royalty. Just because you have servants to tend to you at all times, it never hurts to be proficient in some simple skills of caring for yourself, in the event any of your servants are ever sick or something. No matter, we all finished up our breakfast, and I saw to getting Sabrina and Madeline ready to go to school. The trouble didn't start until it was about time to head out the door. Tommy, thinking he was well enough came downstairs, dressed in a blue Reptar t-shirt and a pair of kacky shorts, claimed he was ready to go to school. Unfortunately, his forehead stated otherwise.

"You still feel warm Tommy, afraid there's no preschool for you today." I said, just as Peter walked into the living room, Dil clinging to his side.

"And I need somebody to stay here to let Alliance Appliance in at nine. Would you mind staying here to let them in? I'll take the girls to school." Peter said.

"No!" Madeline cried, bursting into tears and collapsing to the carpet.

"Nell always takes us to school." Sabrina added.

I turned to my two younger sisters, trying to encourage them to give Peter a chance, just as they did with story time the other night.

"Come on girls, can't you give Peter a chance? He'll make sure you get there safely. Plus, you'll get to go to school in a limo. Now who gets to do that very often?" I said with a smile, hoping to encourage my little sisters.

Sabrina jumped up excitedly and smiled at this news. Madeline though, not quite so much. I then got a brilliant idea. I ran up to the room where they had been sleeping, and grabbed her Elsa doll off of the bed, bringing it back down to her.

"Would you like to take Elsa to school with you today?" I asked, holding the doll out to my younger sister Madeline.

The redhead slowly nodded.

"You can take her, if you calm down and act like a big girl." I said.

"Okay, I'll be good." Madeline squeaked out in a tiny voice, as I handed her the doll, Peter ccame in carrying the girls' backpacks, and soon, they were off to school.

However, no sooner did we see the limo pull out of the driveway, when Tommy turned around from the window, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

"Now Tommy it's okay. Hopefully if you rest today, you'll feel well enough to go to school tomorrow." I said, just as his hand wiped his tears away.

It was obvious he was trying to hide his tears from me, but unknowingly, I saw them. However, I decided not to say anything, worrying I might only embarrass the poor child. I got him and Dil to go play quietly in the playpen while Alliance Appliance was suppose to be there, though they were running late, and Dil wouldn't sit still and work on a puzzle with Tommy. It was obvious he needed to go play outside. Luckily, it was a nice day, and the backyard was fenced in, so I agreed to let Dil go play outside. However, Tommy wanted to go too, which I unfortunately, had to put a stop to, closing the back door to the kitchen and standing in front of the door, blocking his exit.

"But I wanna play outside too!" Tommy said, in a croaky voice.

"Tommy sweetie, you're sick, you can't play outside until you're better." I said.

The three-year-old stared up at me, a sad expression on his face. Just then, the doorbell rang. I went to answer it to find the man from Alliance Appliance standing there.

"Who are you mam?" The man asked.

"I am Helen O'Mally, I am here this week looking after the children of Mr. and Mrs. Pickles. I hear you're here to replace their water filter in the fridge." I said.

"That's correct mam. Anything else you need done while we're here?" The appliance man asked, walking through the house towards the kitchen, with me on their tail.

"I don't think so, but I'll double check with Peter Albany, the other person left in charge, just to be sure." I said, going over to the phone on the wall and dialing his cell phone.

He answered on the third ring.

"Sorry it took me so long to answer Helen, I had a bit of difficulty getting Madeline to let go of my leg and head into class." Peter said.

"Did you finally get her to head into class nicely?" I asked.

"Yes. Luckily, her friend Reggie showed up, offering her a lollipop, which got her attention settled elsewhere. She let go of my leg, ran off to play with him, and I was free to leave. So, what do you need?" Peter asked from his end of the phone.

"The Alliance Appliance guy is here. Mr. and Mrs. Pickles didn't need anything else done, other than getting a replacement water filter put into their fridge, correct?" I asked.

"Nope, that's it." Peter replied.

"Okay, just checking. See you back here shortly. Oh, how did Sabrina do with going off to school?" I asked.

"Just fine. She even said she'd see me later, so guess I'll be heading to pick them up this afternoon as well." Peter said.

I breathed a sigh of relief at his comment.

"Works for me. Anyway, see you back here shortly." I said, hanging up the phone and attending to the repair man, letting him know that all we'd need done is the replacement water filter.

"Okay good cuz I'm finished." The man said, closing up the back of the fridge, turning it back on, and making sure the water portion of the dispenser was working properly.

"I thought those things only did ice. They do water too?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Yes they do, until the filter becomes clogged and unuseable, that's when it stops dispensing water, and what prompted the Pickles to call me to come repair it. Though I've been out here three other times, and the first time I ccame, a recycled filter was in its place, held in place with chewing gum and paper clips. That's long since been removed, and I believe I was the one who told them they really shouldn't try to repair such an item themselves." The man explained.

"I see." I said, putting a finger up to my lips, a bit confused, but more or less, getting what happened here, just as I heard the front door open, and footsteps head towards the kitchen.

"Now, before I can leave, you need to pay me of course." The man said, sitting down at the kitchen table, after testing the dispenser to ensure everything was working properly.

"So do we, pay you out of pocket? Or do we have a bill sent here in the mail or what?" I asked.

"I'll take care of that." Peter said, as I glanced up to see him walk into the kitchen and sit down at the table.

I went into the living room at this point to check on the boys, while Peter saw to paying the appliance man, where Tommy had just finished putting together a Reptar puzzle.

"That's a nice puzzle you got there." I commented, squatting down to the floor to have a better look.

"Yep, that's Reptar, and over there, that's Robosnails." Tommy said, showing me his puzzle, which was at least fifty pieces large.

"Well you did a nice job on this." I said, just as I heard Peter escort the repair man out the door, and Dil trying to come inside, forgetting he still has trouble opening the back door, being only two-years-old and all. I let him inside and sent him into the living room to play with Tommy for a little bit, while I went into the kitchen to talk with Peter.

"So did you pay the appliance man?" I asked.

"Yes I did, all the more reason why Didi scheduled the appointment on the week she and Stu were going to be out of town. Stu, being an inventor, insists on fixing everything himself, but it always ends in disaster. They've needed a new filter for the fridge since Christmas, but being of royalty, and being financially stable, I offer to help pay for a lot of these things." Peter explained, as I took a seat across from him at the kitchen table.

"Wait a minute, what does Stu invent? And shouldn't his inventions be bringing him some money?" I asked.

"He specializes in making toys, but he's made his share of other items as well. Unfortunately, most of his inventions malfunction, or in the case where he had a shot at winning five-hundred dollars, like in the case with the Reptar wagon he built right before Dil was born, well when your invention ends up lost in the forest with everybody's kids inside, and not in Japan at the Reptar corperation, it's kind of hard to win anything if your invention never ends up making it into the contest in the first place." Peter said.

"Did he eventually enter it into the contest?" I asked.

"Nope. By the time his kids, along with the Finsters and Devilles' kids were rescued, the deadline to enter had passed. Plus, the kids had so much fun with the toy, had Stu taken it away, the kids would have been pretty upset." Peter said.

"Wow! So not only do you keep up your villager skills like cooking, cleaning, etc. you also help villagers in need, not just by doing things like babysitting, but also lending them money or paying for things they might not be able to afford, like the case with the Alliance Appliance guy." I said.

"Exactly. Not only did I pay the repair fee, but I also paid for the new water filter for the fridge, which isn't cheep." Peter said.

"About how much do those things usually cost?" I asked.

"They usually cost about…" Peter started to say, before we were rudely interrupted by the scream of two young toddler boys, and a loud crash from the living room.

Worried, we quickly got up from the kitchen table and went into the living room to see what was going on. There were blocks scattered everywhere, a toy fire truck on the floor of the playpen in between Tommy and Dil, with Tommy still holding on to the ladder of the fire truck.

"Come on Tommy, you do the bestest siron. Please! Make the fire truck go!" Dil begged.

"But Dil, my throat really hurts." Tommy said in a barely audible voice.

"No!" Dil cried, bursting into tears.

I ran over to the two boys to see if I could rectify this situation.

"Why don't we propose a compromise. Dil, you know how to sound like a fire engine, don't you?" I asked.

"Yeah, but Tommy does it betterer. He's also good at making the fire truck go too." Dil said.

"But I just heard Tommy say his throat is hurting." I said, approaching Tommy, while Peter ran and got me a flashlight.

"Here you go." Peter said, handing me the flashlight, while I bent over the side of the playpen, where Tommy had come up to the edge of.

"Okay Tommy, can you open your mouth wide for me real quick?" I said.

He did as he was asked, and I peered into his mouth with the flashlight.

"Boy Tommy, your throat does look pretty red. We might need to take you to the doctors tomorrow, but for now, let's try to rest your voice." I said.

He backed away and sat back down on the floor, grabbing hold of the ladder of the fire truck.

"No!" Dil screamed, and before we could stop him, he ran up to the fire truck, grabbing at it, and snatching it away from Tommy.

In doing so however, he caused the ladder to break off the top of the fire truck, as Tommy still had it in his hand.

"You broke it!" Tommy cried.

"No! You broke it!" Dil argued back at the top of his lungs.

"No you did!" Tommy screamed with what little bit of a voice he had left.

"No you did!" Dil screamed.

"Boys! Stop!" Peter cried, interrupting the fight and putting a hand up to stop them.

I turned to Peter.

"What do we do now?" I whispered to Peter.

"We keep the boys separated for as long as we can." Peter whispered back.

"But first." I said, taking the broken fire truck and ladder away from Tommy and Dil.

"Hey!" Both boys cried in unison.

"I'm sorry boys but it's broken. And it's only going to break worse." I said, noticing a sharp piece on the top of the fire truck where the ladder had broken off, making the plastic toy all the more dangerous.

After the fire truck and ladder were properly disposed of, Pewter took Dil over to the couch to watch some episodes of Curious George on Hulu while I had Tommy go up to his room and take a nap, then headed back downstairs and got lunch ready, consisting of chicken alphabet soup for the boys, and ham and cheese sandwiches for Peter and me. An hour later, we all sat down and ate our lunch. I don't think Tommy was too hungry, but he ate a little bit of the soup at least. I only hope it helped his throat a little bit.

"Is that helping your throat a little bit Tommy?" I asked.

He quietly nodded, then went back to slowly eating his soup, while Peter got their bottles of hot milk ready, as it would soon be afternoon nap time for both boys. We put them down for their nap, and I went and read some more of my book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, until it was time to get the boys up, and to see Peter off to pick up my sisters from school. It then hit me that nobody called in Tommy sick from school. Panicking, I approached Peter about this before he left to pick up Sabrina and Madeline.

"Did you think to call Tommy's preschool and state he'd be out today, and possibly all week, depending on how serious his illness got?" I asked.

"Don't worry, I took care of it while in the limo on the way to the girls' school." Peter said.

"Thank goodness!" I said, breathing a sigh of relief.

I decided to wait and get the boys up until the girls were home, figuring everybody could have a snack together, and we could hear about their day. Boy was I only asking for trouble. A little while later, Peter returned with Sabrina and Madeline, who both had good days at school, and both girls had pictures to show me that they had made in art class. I'm guessing all of the commotion awoke the boys, because before I knew it, Tommy and Dil had come downstairs, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.

"How are you doing Tommy?" I heard Sabrina ask him, running up to him.

"I'm alright." Tommy whispered.

"He has a soar throat Sabrina, and can't really talk. Which reminds me! Who'd like some popcickles for a snack?" I asked.

"I do!" Madeline cried.

"Me too!" Sabrina ccried, both of my sisters running for the kitchen.

I caught up to them while Tommy and Dil snuck past, as I pulled open the freezer and found a nearly empty box of Reptar popcickles on the shelf. To my luck, there were enough popcickles in the box for the four kids. A yellow one, an orange one, a blue one, and a purple one.

"Okay we have yellow, orange, blue, and purple. Which color does each person want?" I asked.

"Yellow nanna." Dil cried.

"I want the blue one." Madeline said.

"I'll take orange." Sabrina said.

"Which leaves purple for Tommy." I said, opening up the purple popcickle for Tommy and putting it into a bowl.

I did the same for everybody's popcickles. Reptar's tail broke off of one of them, but I put it into the bowl with Sabrina's remainder of Reptar orange popcickle on the stick, and everybody saw to eating their treat. Everybody except Tommy, who didn't seem impressed by what I had given him.

"Do you like your popcickle Tommy?" I heard Sabrina ask.

He shook his head no.

"Come on Tommy, try it, you never know, it could help your throat feel better." I said, sitting down in an empty seat at the table next to him.

He took a tiny nibble out of his popcickle, while Madeline went on to tell us about her day, in between bites of her blueberry popcickle.

"I had the bestest day! Me and Reggie made Valentines, and played on the monkey bars on the playground!" Madeline said excitedly.

"Reggie's mean." Tommy whispered to Madeline.

"Reggie's not mean he's very nice. You don't even know him because you're just a baby." Madeline said.

"I am not a baby!" Tommy squeaked.

"You are too! And one that needs Nell's attention!" Madeline screamed, throwing her popcickle at Tommy's head.

"I am not!" Tommy screamed, sounding quite hoarse at this point.

"Then if you don't like that popcickle, why are you eating it then?" Madeline asked, standing up on her chair.

"Nell made me!" Tommy screamed, throwing the popcickle into Madeline's face.

Soon, all four of them were throwing their popcickles at one another, until I finally had to whistle and shout, stopping the fight.

"Children! Enough!" I said, running to get several paper towels wet, and seeing to cleaning off all of the kids.

Luckily, Peter overheard everything and came in to see what all was going on.

"What's going on in here?" Peter asked.

"Just a popcickle brawl is all." I said, wiping off Dil's forehead.

"I think everybody needs to take a time out." Peter said.

"I agree. Everybody, up to your rooms for a time out." I said.

Madeline got all fussy over this, as did Dil, but Peter and I both knew what was best for them. Right then, I really wanted to give the kids a spanking, but I knew it wasn't allowed, so bit my tongue, completely dismissing the idea. Sometime later, time out ended, and seeing tomorrow was going to be Valentine's Day, I helped Madeline and Sabrina make boxes to take to school to collect Valentine's in from the other kids, while Peter helped them get their valentine's ready. That's when I brought up the question about Reggie, while Tommy and Dil were quietly in the living room, each playing with some toys and watching a Reptar movie on DVD.

"Tommy seems to think Reggie, Madeline's little friend is very mean. Peter, do you know anything about a little boy named Reggie who hasn't been very nice to him in the past?" I asked.

"Yes I do. Reggie Greenfield. He lives out in Boston where his friend Rosie lives, and he's, well, a male version of Angelica out in that area of the country." Peter said.

"Aha." I replied.

"But I can see where Tommy might have been confused, seeing that he doesn't know Madeline's friend at school." Peter said.

"Me too." I said, as we helped my sisters finish putting together their shoeboxes and Valentine's.

Sabrina covered her box in purple paper, while Madeline covered her's in blue paper, they both wrote their names on the side, decorated the boxes with stickers, and I cut wholes in the tops of each one so there was a slot to drop the Valentines into. I then sent the girls off to play, reminding them to be nice to the boys, while I saw to getting dinner ready. While fixing dinner though, I overheard some noise coming from upstairs, and soon felt a tap on my leg, while I was at the sink, washing off some lettice for a salad. I turned to see Sabrina, waving a yellow sand pale at me.

"What do you got there Sabrina?" I asked.

"If you gotta go potty, here's a bucket for pooping in." Sabrina said.

I just rolled my eyes at my sister.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, draining the lettice and putting it aside on the counter in a collender to take care of matters with Sabrina.

"Tommy needed to go potty, and Madeline was taking too long in the bathroom, causing Tommy to wet his pants. Peter is up there cleaning him up right now, and the two of them are arguing again. Remembering what happened when Lori and Leni Loud started fighting, Lincoln and the rest of his sisters, had to poop in a bucket." Sabrina explained, about to hand me the bucket, which I declined.

"And maybe that's how they handle fights in the Loud's house, but that's not how we're handling them in this house. I don't think Mr. and Mrs. Pickles would approve of their children pooping in buckets. You're a big girl, you will use the potty like you're suppose to, understand?" I said in a stirn tone of voice.

"Yes Nell." Sabrina replied.

"And I'm not fixing dinner twice so neither Tommy nor Madeline has to dine alone. Instead, you will all either zip your lip and get along, or somebody will have to eat by themselves, most likely Madeline, since she's the one who started this whole thing." I said.

"How could you do that to our sister!" Sabrina said.

"Well, Tommy is sick, and Peter and I do need to make sure he's getting plenty to eat and drink so he doesn't end up becoming dehydrated. Also, trying to fix dinner twice is simply, out of the question. Heck, I don't even see how Mr. and Mrs. Loud could handle such a thing. I mean, they already have eleven children, and then there's the parents. Only fixing one meal for Lori and Leni and two meals for everybody else, that's, twenty-five meals! A bit, unnecessary and a bit extreme. There are better ways to handle brawls, and giving the two arguing people, special treatment, isn't going to help the situation." I lectured, boring my sister Sabrina to tears.

"Okay okay. So what do we do?" Sabrina asked.

"First, you can go put that bucket back where you found it. Secondly, you can go wash up for dinner, and tell Peter it's time to round up everybody and bring them downstairs." I said.

Sabrina took the yellow bucket back where she found it, and we all saw to sitting down for dinner. To my surprise, the fights stopped for the night, and I found out from Peter that he had a talk with Tommy and Madeline both, explaining to them that Tommy was sick, so he's liable to be a bit more cranky and unwilling to play or do stuff, reminding Madeline that she needs to be a bit more considerate and respectful in somebody else's home, and he also told Tommy that if he wasn't feeling well, his best course of action for now, would be to leave and get out of Madeline's sight if she was bugging him. I found this to be a good compromise, and I brought up what Sabrina tried to propose, to which he started laughing.

"I do agree with you, how the Louds handled Lori and Leni's fighting in that Brawl in the Family episode wasn't the best way to handle things." Peter said.

"Yeah, I think how we're handling things is a much better approach." I said.

Peter nodded his head in agreement, as he still had a bite of garlic bread in his mouth, seeing tonight's dinner was garlic bread, spaghetti and meatballs, and a garden salad. We all finished up our dinner, and everybody earned a Reptar bar for dessert. Dil wanted another popcickle, to which I had to sadly tell him, we were all out of popcickles, we'd need to get more at the store. He got a little bit fussy, but calmed down when I gave him his Reptar bar for dessert. A short while later, we got everybody ready for bed, and tonight, it was my turn to read to the boys, while Peter read to the girls.

The girls requested he read Beauty and the Beast to them again, while I introduced Tommy and Dil to Pete's Dragon. They seem to enjoy the book very much, and I got the cutest comment out of Tommy before I switched off the light.

"Me and Elliot are gonna go to sleep together." Tommy whispered.

I looked over and saw him snuggling up in bed with his Reptar doll.

"Don't you mean, Reptar?" I asked.

"No, that's Elliot." Tommy said.

Then I chuckled and realized what he was doing.

"Ah, I see what's going on here. You're pretending Reptar is the dragon Elliot from the story." I said.

Tommy nodded his head yes, as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. Dil had long since fallen asleep over in his bed, so I turned off the lights and left the room to find Peter in the hallway.

"You get the boys to bed?" Peter whispered to me.

"Yes, you do the same with the girls?" I asked.

"Yep. I'm just glad despite the popcickle fight from earlier, we got everybody to calm down." Peter said.

"Yeah, and I managed to stop Sabrina before one of Tommy and Dil's sandbox buckets turned into our new toilet." I said.

"Yeah. I actually know the Louds personally, as they visited me at my castle over the Christmas holiday, and I recently received a letter from Clyde McBride inviting all of us to visit them next summer, which I plan to read aloud at my annual Valentine's Day party tomorrow night. However, if anymore situations get handled in the manner they did with that brawl that occurred after they left my castle, you bet I'll be having a serious talk with them. I mean, had they just, let Lori and Leni work things out on their own, instead of going to extreme like they did, they could have all avoided, well, such a mess." Peter explained, as we saw to feeding the dogs, cleaning up from dinner, and turning off the downstairs lights.

"Agreed. Well, we have another long day ahead of us tomorrow. So, better see to heading to bed." I said, when we reached the top of the stairs to see to getting ready for bed and turning in for the night.

"Yep, and I especially have a big day tomorrow, with my party and all. Which, how are we going to handle that party? I said originally I'd host it here, before Tommy got sick." Peter said.

"Let's see how Tommy's doing in the morning, and we'll go from there." I said, heading into the bathroom to grab me a shower and brush my teeth, before heading off to bed, exhausted from a long day of babysitting, and breaking up fights.

End of Nell POV

And so, the exhausted princess, put her notebook away, said her prayers, and collapsed on the bed without ever shutting off the light, too exhausted to move to go turn it off.

Author's Note: I made a tiny reference to The Rugrats Movie, and the bit where an earlier water filter for the fridge was repaired with chewing gum and paper clips, I got from the episode, The Pirate Light, when Stu attempted that method to fix their hot water heater at one time. Also, references to The Loud House episode, Brawl in the Family were made, and the bit with the popcicle, I have to thank Nairobi-harper for inspiring. You should all know, she hates all popcickles, no matter the flavor, but her family makes her eat them anyway, despite this fact. I couldn't see Tommy hating popcickles all-together, but I could see him not liking a particular flavor all that much, hince, the one he was given, seeing it was the last popcickle in the package. I was also inspired by the Firecracker popcickles, which sometimes, the red end of the red, white, and blue popcickles will break off in the package, to have the same thing happen to Reptar's tail on some of the Reptar popcickles, which, seeing his tail would stick out, I could see that easily happening, especially to popcickles towards the bottom of the package. And just as a reminder, I came up with Reptar popcickles, they weren't something that existed on the show, despite there being practically everything else Reptar, like candy bars, cookies, a cereal, etc. Also, I own the OC of Reggie Greenfield, while the Reggie that Madeline plays with at school, is owned by Sofia2017Planning.


	4. Tuesday, My Valentine's Day with Tommy

Author's Note: Sorry I didn't release anything yesterday. I guess, I was just, too tired from the day before with my nephew, and on Monday evening, I needed to update one of my other ongoing stories, A Finster House Divided, simply because, it just, needed to be done. Anyway, I'm going to try my best to post something every day between now and Easter, seeing that today is Ash Wednesday, meaning the season of Lent has begun. I'm also determined to reach another goal, having 200 stories posted to my profile by the time Easter Sunday hits on April 16, 2017, and I'm at and updating story number 192 at this time. Well, we'll never get to 200 if we don't finish up story 192, so, without further a due, let's move on, to the next chapter in this story!

Chapter 4, Tuesday, My Valentine's Day with Tommy

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

Who knew by the end of Valentine's Day, I would perhaps, know my little sister's boyfriend at least as well as she does, if not better. No worries, I would never cheat on my current boyfriend Bobby Lee with a three-year-old, but what the heck. If Bobby and I can't be together for Valentine's Day, might as well spend it with Tommy Pickles, right? Okay, it wasn't quite like that. If anything, the start of the day wasn't anything to write home about in a romance novel. After all, he's been sick since my villager's internship had started, and at this point in my journey, I was roughly halfway through the week, and looked like my week was long from being over. When I went to awaken the boys that morning, mainly Tommy, because on this particular day, everybody had been up slightly later the night before, finishing up their Valentines for school where my two younger sisters, Madeline and Sabrina were concerned, and while Dil got Peter up, Tommy, had not awakened with the early bird who catches the worm, though why I'm making such a reference, seeing I've been scared of birds since I was slightly older than Tommy because of an accident I was involved in where a bird hurt my cheek is beyond me, but I wouldn't worry about that right now.

I went in to awaken the sleeping purple haired prince, okay, so he's not actually a prince, he's a villager, but just the same, I went into the boys room to wake him up, when he opened his eyes, and stared at me, with tears filling up the corners of his eyes, and a look on his face like he was in pain, and a great deal of pain at that.

"Good morning Tommy, what's wrong?" I asked.

As he sat up in bed, I noticed him playing with his ears, and then, touching his chest and throat.

"Do your ears hurt? Does your throat hurt?" I asked.

He nodded his head yes, twice, answering both of my questions. I sighed, realizing that whatever he was sick with, had gotten worse, but I wasn't sure who he saw for a doctor or anything like that.

" _Better consult Peter._ " I thought to myself, as I had Tommy head downstairs to the kitchen with me, where Peter was making another one of his delicious breakfasts, today's being, begals and cream cheese.

"Well good morning sleepy heads. How is everybody this morning?" Peter cheerfully greeted, giving Madeline and Sabrina another helthing of begals, and refilling Dil's sippy cup with some more red juice.

"I'm fine, but I think somebody needs to go to the doctor's. He awoke in a great deal of pain. Apparently his ears, throat, and chest are bothering him." I said.

"And looks like his stomach is bothering him too." Peter said, pointing over to Tommy at the kitchen table, where he now had his hands on his stomach, the look of pain still spread across his face, as he's biting his lip, trying not to cry in front of my two younger sisters or his younger brother.

"Okay Peter, does Tommy see Doctor Lucy Carmichael too? The same doctor I take Madeline to?" I asked.

"Nope, he sees Doctor Shacter." Peter replied, as I went over to the phone, where Peter handed me a slip of paper with the doctor's phone number on it.

"So when the automated menu comes on when I call, make sure to press the button to connect me to Doctor Shactor's secretary." I said.

"Correct." Peter said, using a flashlight at this point to look into Tommy's ears and throat.

"And you can tell the doctor his ears and throat look pretty red." Peter said.

"Why don't you get him some apple juice while I take care of this." I said to Peter, taking the phone off of the hook and dialing the number.

I got the automated menu, and pressed the correct button to get to Doctor Shacter's secretary. It rang a few times before I heard somebody pick up the phone.

"Doctor Shacter's office this is Cynthia." The lady said on the phone.

"Yes, my name is Helen O'Mally, and I am calling on behalf of Tommy Pickles, birth date, August 11, 1990, I am looking after him this week while his parents are out of town, but he seems to have come down with a bad cold, and awoke this morning with a soar throat and his ears seem to be bothering him." I said.

"Well there is both, Strep and an ear infection going around." Cynthia said on the phone.

"Yes, I am aware of that. We believe he probably caught this from one of his little friends at preschool." I said.

"How bad is it?" Cynthia asked.

"I have Peter Albany here helping me to look after him, and he claims his throat and ears look pretty red. Plus, I knew something was wrong when he awoke this morning, crying and in pain, and slightly later than usual." I said.

I heard Cynthia type on a computer keyboard and rustle some papers around on her end of the phone, before she returned with my appointment time for Tommy.

"Can you bring him in for nine this morning?" Cynthia asked.

"I sure can. We're keeping him home from school this week anyway." I said.

"Okay we'll see you then." Cynthia said, as I heard a click and got off the phone.

I then called the cab company to schedule us a cab to take us there, and informed Peter that he'd be taking my sisters to school, and if he didn't mind, if he could also take Dil with him, so I'd only have to fool with Tommy at the doctor's office. He tried to insist on taking Tommy to the doctor's, since apparently, he's taken Tommy there before back when he was two and he was watching after him, but I insisted on doing this, since I was the one who spoke with the doctor's secretary on the phone. So, it was settled then. Of course, Tommy didn't drink very much apple juice from his sippy cup, as it was obvious by the look on his face, and how much he was flinching in pain each time he took a sip, it hurt to swallow anything. No matter, we all got ready to go, my sisters left for school with their Valentine's Day boxes they had made the night before and the Valentine's to pass out at their class, and shortly after Peter's limo left with my sisters and Dil, the cab showed up to take me and Tommy to the doctor's office. Though I had quite the time trying to get him ready to go, as he wanted to wear his blue Reptar t-shirt, which was dirty from the other day, and while I tried to convince him to wear a clean shirt, he wouldn't budge. So while everything was clean on him except for his shirt, which I did manage to spray with Fabreeze so it at least smelled clean, we got out the door, him clutching on to his stuffed green Reptar doll while I carried a couple of cloth shopping bags and his diaper bag, we piled into the cab, and next thing we knew, we were on our way to the doctor's office.

We got there and headed up to the third floor where pediatrics was located, and headed into the waiting room, where I let them know Tommy was here for his appointment. Cynthia told us to have a seat and they'd call us when the doctor was ready. We found two vacated chairs, and while there were plenty of toys to play with, including a duplo table and some stuffed animals, Tommy wasn't all that interested in going and playing. That is, until another little boy, slightly older than my sisters, with brown messy hair on the top of his head walked in with his mother and sat down in the seat across from us.

"Hi Pickles, I recognize you. I'm Josh, remember me?" The boy asked.

From the look on Tommy's face, I could tell he did recognize him, but not in a good way.

"Come on, we can play with the Duplos while we wait for the doctor to call us." Josh said.

Tommy shook his head no, to which I decided to speak up.

"Listen, Josh, Tommy doesn't feel well, so why don't you go play by yourself." I said.

"Oh. Well I'm only here to get my allergy shot anyway, a lot more serious than whatever he has." Josh said with a smirk, as he went off to play with the duplos.

He then proceeded to bring over a bunch to Tommy that looked to be covered in mucus and smelling of poop.

"Here, you can play with these, they smell disgusting. After all, I'm a bigger kid, thus, I deserve all of the clean Duplos. Fair is fair." Josh said, tossing the disgusting blocks into Tommy's lap.

I took them away from Tommy immediately, just as I was about to turn to his mother, and have a word with her, when a nurse called his name. They luckily left the waiting room just in time, as I went up and showed the messy blocks to Cynthia, who took them from me to be cleaned up. I went and sat back down next to Tommy, who hadn't moved an inch, his hand on his stomach at this point, while his other one was snuggling with his Reptar toy close by. I felt so bad for the poor little guy, that I only hoped the doctor would be able to make him feel better.

"Tommy Pickles." A lady said from the doorway that led back to the offices.

"That's us, come on Tommy." I said, taking his free hand.

"Okay Nora." He whispered to me.

I chuckled to myself.

"Nora?" The nurse asked me.

"No no, my name is Helen. He's just, got me mixed up with a lady from a book I read to him at bedtime last night." I said.

"Oh? What book was that?" The nurse asked.

"Pete's Dragon." I said, as we headed into the doctor's office.

The nurse had Tommy measured and weighed. He's currently thirty-six pounds and three feet tall. I was glad to learn his weight and height were fine, despite the rest of his helth.

"Has he had any fever?" The nurse asked.

"Yes." I replied.

The nurse also took his blood pressure, and then left the room, stating the doctor would be in shortly, though we didn't actually see Doctor Shacter like I thought. Rather, we saw the nurse practitioner, a lady named Nurse Georden. She checked him out, doing a Strep Test and looking in his ears. Despite how awful he felt, I was very proud of how cooperative Tommy was being for the doctor. Much better than my sister Madeline is at times, but it does help when you're not afraid of the doctor, and Sabrina has told me that her boyfriend Tommy isn't afraid of anything, and this doctor visit proved it. He even remained calm in the waiting room when that big kid bully, who I'm assuming is somebody he knew from his past, started picking on him. Though I'm not sure if he was only trying to be a polite gentleman, or if he simply, felt too bad to lift a finger to this bully, that he felt it best to ignore him. I wouldn't worry about it for now, as the nurse turned to speak to me at this point.

"Well we're not sure if he has Strep, but we'll call you in a day or two with the results, he does definitely have an ear infection though, so we'll prescribe the same antibiotic he took the last time, A Mox a Cillin." Nurse Geordon said.

"Okay, sounds good. Now I must ask, what pharmacy will we be picking up the prescription at, as I've never watched either Tommy or Dil before when they've been sick." I asked.

"At the supermarket pharmacy, where all of the Pickles boys meds get called into." Nurse Geordon said.

"Okay, sounds good." I said, getting Tommy ready to go, and using a pay phone out in the waiting area to call us a cab to pick us up and take us to the store.

Luckily I had some money on me to pick up a couple of groceries on top of picking up the prescription, which was handed to me on a piece of paper before we left the doctor's office. We headed downstairs and waited for our cab to pull up, remaining quite silent I might add. Soon, it came, and we were headed off to the store. When we got there, I found a cart in the parking lot, placed Tommy with his Reptar doll inside, and we headed inside, where I ran the prescription to the pharmacy to get it filled. Then, while we were waiting for the medicine to be filled, we went and did a little bit of shopping, where I picked up some more soups, including one of my favorites, broccoli chetter soup, and we got some more apple juice and red juice, since with so many of us drinking juice as of late, I'm sure we were getting low. Then, I took Tommy down the ice cream and popcickle isle, and had this comment to make to him, as I spotted a box of the Reptar delux popcickles on a shelf.

"Since you were such a good boy at the doctor's office, and seeing these might help your throat, not to mention, we finished off the box in your freezer at home, you deserve a treat." I said, placing the box of popcickles into the cart.

"And I promise, I'll eat the purple ones this time, since you don't like them." I said, only to look over to see that Tommy didn't hear a single word I said, because he had fallen asleep.

Oh well, he needs his sleep, so I just, let him rest in the cart, while we went and paid for the groceries and headed back over to the pharmacy to wait for his prescription to be ready. We only had to wait ten minutes, and it was ready to go. Sure enough, it was the liquid pink medicine, and according to the bottle's instructions, it's to remain refridgerated, and he's to take it four times a day for the next ten days. I wasn't too worried. If he's as good at taking medicine as he was for the nurse practitioner, then getting him to take this nasty liquid would be a piece of cake.

Our cab returned, as I told them to come back in forty-five minutes, and little Tommy remained asleep this entire time. It did make things interesting transporting a thirty-six pound dead weight three-year-old from the cart to the cab, along with my groceries, but luckily, the cab driver helped us, and upon getting back to Mr. and Mrs. Pickles house, the driver very nicely helped me carry the groceries up to the porch, while I carried Tommy inside, post opening the door, as looked like we were the only ones home at that time. Once I paid the cab fare and put the groceries away, while I got Tommy on the living room couch to finish his nap, I ran across a note left on the kitchen table by Peter, claiming that he took Dil to the park to play with his friend Savanna Green, they'd be home after lunch.

" _Looks like it's just me and Tommy for lunch._ " I thought to myself, as I fixed us a can of cream of mushroom soup to split, and saw to getting him up from his nap.

I don't think he really wanted to get up, but I told Tommy it was time for his first dose of medicine, which, it also stated on the bottle to take each dose with food, so I would follow those instructions to the letter for sure. We had some soup and juice, and I had him take his first dose of medicine before we each had a popcickle for dessert. Me having a purple one that was grape flavored from the new box of Reptar popcickles, while he had one of the white ones, which was lemon flavored. I was the first one to finish my popcickle, when I noticed a joke on the stick.

"Ooh! These Reptar popcickles have jokes on the sticks? I didn't realize that. Of course, there's a lot of things you don't realize when somebody and her sister are having a popcickle fight. Now, let's see what my joke says. What's a duck's favorite snack?" I read aloud.

I turned over the stick to see the answer on the opposite side.

"Quackers and milk." I read aloud, chuckling a little when I realized the joke.

A short while later, Tommy finished his lemon flavored popcickle, and I read him his joke.

"Tommy, your joke says, why did the cow rearrange the furniture?" I read aloud.

Tommy looked confused, not knowing why, so I turned over his popcickle stick and read the answer.

"Because they make great moo-ving men." I read aloud, as we both started laughing.

Of course, it was obvious that poor Tommy was still in pain, as no sooner did he start giggling slightly, when that look of pain crossed his face again and he flinched, stopping his laughter all together.

"Aw, poor little guy." I said, getting his hot milk ready and getting him ready to go take his nap.

We went upstairs to his room, where I had him take a nap in his bed. At first, he wanted to rest on the couch, but I told him I wasn't sure what kind of mood everybody would be in when they got home, so better have you rest upstairs. I had him change into some warm blue footsy pajamas, and I read him his Reptar Goes to Mars book while he drank his hot milk, and I swear, he fell asleep before I ever finished reading the book. I tucked him in and headed downstairs, just when Peter returned, carrying a sleeping two-year-old Dil in his arms, who got the couch, since it was obvious that instead of coming back in the limo, Peter decided to get some fresh air and exercise, carrying this poor little guy back from the park, only to be pretty exhausted by the time he returned to the house. Luckily he had an alarm set on his phone so he knew when to go pick up my sisters from school, because we both sat down in easy chairs and had ourselves a nap, no sooner after we got Dil settled. Eventually, it was as if I closed my eyes, and more or less, immediately opened them again to the sound of Peter's alarm going off, as two hours had passed, and it was time for him to go pick up the girls, while I saw to awakening Tommy and having him and his brother have a snack, and giving Tommy his next dose of his antibiotic.

"I want Reptar cookies!" Dil cried, running into the kitchen towards the pantry, trying to reach the shelf where the cookies sat.

Not wanting him to hurt himself, I ran and got the cookies out, and then, we both went upstairs and got Tommy up from his nap. Dil wanted to wake him up by shining a flashlight in his eyes, to which I discouraged very quickly, telling him that such a means of waking up your brother, especially when he doesn't feel well, is probably not a good idea. I got him up, and while I think he could have slept forever, he came downstairs, and we all had our snack of some Reptar cookies and juice, and I saw to having Tommy take his next dose of medicine, as we'd at least see that he got three doses in him today, making sure he got four doses in him tomorrow, one of which, would take place at breakfast, while the other three would take place at lunch, snack, and dinner or dessert. I'd probably give him the last dose of the day along with his vitamins and florride, to keep things consistent, and I'm sure Peter would agree with that plan as well.

While we were eating our snack, I asked Dil about his time at the park, to which he told me he and his friend Savanna and her sister Samaya had fun, playing in the sandbox and going to the moon.

"Ooh! What did you see on the moon? Anything interesting?" I asked.

"We saw graters and moon monsters." Dil said with a mouth full of cookies.

"Now Dil, don't talk with your mouth full. Chew and swallow first." I said.

Dil chewed and swallowed his bite of cookies, then repeated what he previously said. Then, he turned to his brother.

"Hey Tommy, after snack, wanna play?" Dil asked.

Before Tommy could whisper or squeak out an answer, Peter and my sisters returned, Sabrina and Madeline running excitedly into the kitchen, excited to show me all of the pretty Valentines they had received that day at school.

"Look what Reggie made me Nell! Look what Reggie made me!" Madeline cried, sticking a pretty red paper heart covered in silver glitter in my face.

"Wow that's beautiful!" I said.

"Reggie?" I heard Tommy whisper, as Madeline set her Valentine down on the table next to Tommy, then turn to Sabrina with this to say to her.

"I noticed your boyfriend never made you no Valentine. Yeah, he's a baby. He don't know what it means to give Valentine's." Madeline said, blowing a raspberry at Sabrina.

"He does too!" Sabrina protested.

"Now girls, Tommy had to go to the doctor's this morning. He hasn't felt up to doing much today other than sleeping." I said.

Though we were all caught off guard when we heard some paper ripping. I turned to see Tommy ripping up Madeline's Valentine.

"Reggie's tricking you. He's mean and don't mean nothing." Tommy hissed under his breath, tossing the ripped pieces of valentine aside, making my sister Madeline cry.

"Reggie's not mean, Tommy is." Madeline cried, running off into the living room, where I tagged after her to try to cheer her up.

"Now Madeline sweetie, I'm sure Tommy didn't mean to rip up your Valentine from Reggie." I said, putting an arm around her trembling shoulders, as she stared out the window into the front yard.

"He did too. He thinks Reggie is mean, just like Angelica." Madeline said.

"Madeline, sweetie?" I said, putting a hand under her chin and turning her head to face me.

"Peter tells me that Tommy knows another Reggie that isn't exactly very nice. He doesn't feel well and he's getting a lot of things mixed up because of it. Heck, earlier at the doctor's office today, he called me Nora, getting me mixed up with one of the characters in the Pete's Dragon book I read to him at bedtime last night. It's nothing personal, but tell you what. I'll help Tommy fix your valentine from Reggie, will that do?" I asked.

Madeline sniffled back some tears and smiled.

"There, that's better." I said, gently patting her on the head, just as Peter, Sabrina, and Tommy all entered the living room.

"Is everything okay in here?" Peter asked.

"Yes. Tommy and I will see to fixing the Valentine he ripped up, while you see to escorting Dil and my sisters to your party." I said.

"Yep, I have moved the party to my castle, and everybody better go get ready, because we need to be heading to my castle within the next hour or so so I can get things ready for tonight." Peter said.

"But… But… What about Tommy?" Sabrina cried, now crying.

Now it was my turn to comfort my other sister, as I went over to her, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and knelt down to her level.

"Sweetheart, afraid that makes two of us who won't be with our valentines this year. I won't be seeing Bobby tonight, and afraid Tommy is too sick to go to the party. He still has a fever and hasn't been on his medicine for twenty-four hours." I explained.

"Twenty-four hours? How long is that?" Sabrina asked.

"Twenty-four hours is from the time you wake up one morning, to the time you awaken the next morning." I explained.

"Well then, if that's the case, then I won't be caught dead at that dumb old party!" Sabrina cried, throwing herself down on the living room carpet.

"Well if Sabrina's not going, then I'm not going neither!" Madeline cried, also slumping down to the carpet.

"And it'll be no fun with Tommy not there." Dil said, running over to his brother and grabbing at his legs, nearly pulling him down to the floor.

At that moment, Peter and I stood there, watching all of the kids, looking to see what Tommy's response would be in all of this. Next thing I noticed, was Tommy turned, and pointed his finger towards the front door.

"I'm sorry Tommy, but Helen's right, you can't go to the party." Peter said.

So then he pointed his finger to his brother and my little sisters, and then back over to the door.

"Oh, I think I get what our little man of charades is trying to say here. He wants his brother and my sisters to go to the party and have a good time. Am I right Tommy?" I asked, looking in his direction.

Tommy nodded his head yes and smiled.

"Do you really want me to go Tommy? You don't want me to stay here with you?" Sabrina asked.

Again, he nodded his head yes.

"Okay, I'll go, not just for my little sister, but for you." Sabrina said, giving Tommy a hug.

"Aw!" Peter and I cried, watching the two hug.

"Okay, we'd better be getting ready to go." Peter said, leading his three little partiers upstairs to get ready, while I got Tommy situated on the couch, and saw to putting on a movie for him.

"Here Tommy, how about we watch the movie of Pete's Dragon." I said, taking it off of the bookshelf of DVD's, only for Tommy to jump off the couch and pull out something different.

I looked down and saw in his hands, he had the DVD of the Captain Blasto Lego Movie.

"You want to watch the Captain Blasto Lego Movie instead?" I asked.

He shook his head yes, so I went and turned on the TV, fired up the DVD player, to which he ran over and wanted to help me put the movie in and close the drawer, and soon, I had him busy with that movie playing, while I went upstairs and saw to helping my sisters get ready to head to the party. Madeline wore her blue sparkly dress she had brought with her, the one she attempted to play beauty parlor the other day with Tommy in, and Sabrina wore one identical to Madeline's, only her's was pink instead of blue.

"Wow! You girls look great!" I said, admiring them standing next to one another in the bedroom where they were sleeping at night.

"Are you sure you're okay with missing the party Nell?" Madeline asked.

"I'm fine, I wouldn't be caught dead at that party. Besides, I think Tommy trusts you more than Bobby would trust me to go to a party alone. Though it partially has to do with the fact that he's sick, and probably knows most of who's going to Peter's party, while Bobby wouldn't know anybody going, not being able to trust me to behave." I said.

"Well, okay then." Sabrina said, as she and Madeline both gave me a hug, just as Peter walked up with Dil, now wearing a yellow shirt and red suspenders.

"Are we ready to go ladies?" Peter asked.

"Yes." Sabrina and Madeline said in unison, just as I knelt down and whispered something very important to Sabrina.

"You don't have to worry Sabrina. I'm gonna take good care of Tommy, and I promise, I won't make a move on him or anything. We're just friends. Besides, Bobby wouldn't like it if I cheated on him, and Tommy, as cute as he can be, he's much too young for me." I whispered to her.

She giggled and smiled, running off to grab her sister's hand, as Peter led all of us downstairs, and I saw them all out the door. Once they were in Peter's limo, headed off to his castle to celebrate Valentine's Day, my evening with Tommy, began. First thing first, fix Madeline's valentine from Reggie. She might not see it until tomorrow, but at least when I had Tommy apologize to her, she'd be hopefully, more likely to forgive him if he had a fixed valentine to give to her. I went into the kitchen and got together all of the pieces, then rummaged around through various drawers in the kitchen and in this chest in the living room, until I found some glue, then brought everything over to the coffee table, where while we watched the rest of the Captain Blasto Lego Movie, we sat down and got to work.

"Okay Tommy, now let's put some glue here." I said, instructing him to put glue in just the right spots to glue the glittered heart back together.

"Remember, the glitter side needs to be facing up." I said, as he did what I instructed, much to the child's dismay.

"I understand you are confused, but there is more than one person named Reggie in this world, and you really hurt Madeline's feelings by ripping this up." I said, as we glued on the last piece.

"Now we'll put this up to dry." I said, putting the valentine on the top shelf of the bookshelf of DVD's, far out of anybody's reach for the time being.

"That was very good of you to help me fix Madeline's Valentine that you ruined. I also gotta give you credit. You're quite brave to trust my other sister Sabrina to go off to that party without you tonight. I don't think Bobby would have ever trusted me, of course, back when I was my sisters' age, I didn't quite understand romance, just, bullying." I said, returning to the couch with Tommy, as we saw the tail end of the movie, and listened to the music over the closing credits.

After the movie was done, we went into the kitchen where we played with Clay-doh for a little while at the kitchen table, until it was getting close to time for dinner. I made a few hearts out of red clay-doh, while Tommy made Reptar out of some green clay-doh, and using these letter cookie cutters, we spelled out our names in clay-doh, I helped him spell Tommy, and I had him help me find the letters for my name, well, the nickname of Nell, since that's what he, Dil, and my little sisters, Sabrina and Madeline call me at least. I knew having him help me spell out Helen might be too confusing, so decided against that plan for the time being.

Once we finished playing with clay-doh, I saw to getting him ready for dinner. Little did I know that when it came to what would soon be my evening with this three-year-old gentleman, only one thing was needed, to make it a perfect night for this little guy. And that thing was, Reptar.

"Okay Tommy, it's just you and me, so, what will it be tonight? Broccoli and chetter soup? Or would you like to try the other soup I picked up today, that being, bake potato soup?" I asked.

I then saw Tommy pointing to the shelf with the cereal on it in the pantry.

"Cereal for dinner? Well, that's not what I'd pick, but since it is Valentine's Day, I guess, I can make an acception." I said, going to the shelf and picking up a box of cereal called Corigated Bread Puffs.

I showed the box to Tommy, to which he rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue, like he thought I was going to poison him. I'm actually surprised I hadn't already seen that look on his face earlier in the day when giving him his medicine, but I'm sure when your nose is stopped up, your throat hurts, and you feel miserable, you want to take the medicine, in hopes that it helps you to feel better. This, however, was not what he wanted, so I put that back and pulled out the box next to it, a blue box with a green dinosaur on the front, and in big yellow letters at the top, read, Reptar. I showed him the box, and his face broke out into a huge smile, like it was Christmas morning. I didn't have to say anything. While I quickly glanced at the ingredients on the back of the box, I could care less at that moment that he wanted cereal for dinner with no nutricional value in it what so ever. It was Valentine's Day, he didn't feel good, and he had to miss the party. I had to do something to make this day worth while, so, I gave in, going against my own intuition, letting him have Reptar cereal for dinner. I even decided to have a bowl myself.

"Tommy, do you like milk in your cereal?" I asked.

He shook his head yes, so I got the milk out of the fridge, poured some cereal into a bowl, and then, poured in the milk, only to notice something very odd.

"Eeewww! This milk is turning green! I don't know if we should drink this milk Tommy." I said, staring into the bottle to see that the milk inside the bottle, was still the correct color of white.

Tommy just sat at the table and smiled. Either little boys have no problem with drinking stuff that's not the correct color, or he knew something I didn't. Though as far as I knew, it could be both, seeing at one time when we were kids, Bobby brought gummy worms to school, and any he hadn't put down my pants, he ate like they were the best thing since sliced bread, and I, being a girl, couldn't see what was so delicious about such a treat. No matter, just to be safe, I took another look at the box of cereal. Beneath the name of the cereal, I saw the following caption.

" _They're round, they're mean, they turn milk green._ " Read the slogan.

"Okay, well, if they're suppose to turn milk green, then, I guess we can eat this, and I'll give it a try too." I said, pouring myself a bowl, getting us some apple juice, and the two of us, sat down at the table and silently enjoyed our dinner of juice and Reptar cereal together.

To my surprise, the cereal was good, and despite the milk turning green, as I, too, prefer milk with my cereal, it didn't taste any different, only the color changed from the food coloring in the cereal I'm assuming. After dinner, we had just enough time to watch one movie together, so I decided with it being Valentine's Day, I'd let us watch another movie together. Sure enough, Tommy came over to the couch, carrying not one, not two, but three DVD's with Reptar's picture on the front of them.

"I said we had time for one Reptar movie." I said loudly, hoping he'd get the hint.

However, he tossed the DVD's down in my lap, looking from each DVD, unsure of which one to pick.

"Oh, you can't decide which one to watch. You want me to pick one then, huh?" I asked.

"Yes." He whispered quietly, so I picked up the three DVD's he brought over to me, and looked through them, trying to decide which one we should watch.

The first DVD I picked up, had Reptar with some teredactal destroying a city on the front of the cover, and the title, Runaway Reptar at the top. Reading the blerb on the back, claiming that Reptar was helping Dactar destroy the city as reported by some reporter and her dog, it was up to the professor and his crew, to figure out what was wrong with Reptar. However, I then glanced at the length of the movie, one hour and fifty-eight minutes. Noticing it was long, I tossed it aside and picked up the second DVD he handed me. The title said Reptar vs. The Aliens, and according to the back of the box, this movie claimed to be about some aliens coming to take over the world, trapping Reptar in a secret cave. Would he be able to escape and defeat the aliens, saving the earth in time? While the movie was much shorter than Runaway Reptar, being eighty minutes in length, I wasn't sure if I was up for such a movie, seeing we had just recently watched an action movie earlier, that being the Captain Blasto Lego Movie. If anything, I was more in the mood, for a musical.

Luckily, my plee was answered, when I picked up the third DVD he handed me, after tossing Reptar vs. The Aliens aside. This one was called, Reptar on Ice, and according to the box, which, I swear I recognized the lady in the picture with Reptar, in particular, her green hair, I saw this performance was Live at Rockafella Center in New York City, and it featured Sherry Berry playing the understudy role of the girl reporter in this fun-filled ice show musical, complete with action, romance, and big musical fun. Reading the name, Sherry Berry however, and seeing her picture on the box as the girl reporter, made tears well up in the corners of my eyes. I knew something seemed familiar about her voice when I put on that CD for the boys to fall asleep to the other night, and then, at that moment, it hit me why.

When I was little, before either of my sisters were born and my parents were still alive, they use to take me to Sherry Berry concerts. It was a fond memory I had of her, and sadly, we were going to take Madeline and Sabrina to see her in concert, only they then got sick and died, ruining that plan, and because I wasn't the richest girl on the planet, and then, we dealt with Jimmy and all of that other stuff, now finally ending up in King Roland and Queen Miranda's care, Sherry Berry has more or less, become nothing more than a distant memory from my ancient past, that is, until tonight, when Tommy was about to help me rediscover her beautiful music. Of course, I was taken by surprise that Tommy didn't laugh at me. Though I shouldn't be too surprised, seeing that laughing at the joke on his popcickle stick earlier that day was only painful, on top of being in so much pain because he was sick, but then, he took me by surprise by the next thing he did. As I sat there, crying, trying to remain quiet, it's obvious he saw my tears, as next thing I knew, I felt two little arms wrapping around my torso, and giving me a hug.

"Thanks Tommy. It's okay. I just, miss my mommy and daddy that's all. Though I'm sure you miss your mommy and daddy too, with them being out of town. At least yours are coming back. Mine, well, I'd rather, not talk about it." I said, sobbing into the young child's shoulder, as we both quietly cried for a few minutes, as even he, too, started crying when I mentioned how he must be missing his parents as well.

Then, after we calmed down and regained our composure, he picked up the other two movies that I had tossed aside, trying to get me to pick one of them.

"Tommy, it's okay, I'd kind of like to see Reptar on Ice if you don't mind." I said, picking up the Reptar on Ice DVD.

He stared at me, looking confused, like, was I sure about this.

"Yes, I am sure. I'll be fine, don't you worry." I said.

And with those final words, he ran over to the DVD player, and pressed the button to open the drawer, and I went and put on the disc, though while the disc loaded up and I got the TV turned on, I also ran into the kitchen and got us some Reptar bars to eat for dessert, and Tommy's evening dose of medicine, vitamins and florride, bringing everything back into the living room, where we started the movie. We had our dessert, I went and fixed his hot milk at a point, and all-in-all, the Reptar on Ice musical, was quite delightful! I loved the songs, and Sherry Berry was just as good as I remember her being from my childhood! Her voice hadn't changed a bit, and for an understudy, she did a beautiful job portraying the role of the girl reporter in the show.

After the movie ended, before I could turn off the TV post turning off the DVD player and putting the three Reptar movies back on to the shelf, Tommy hid the remote on the couch, like he didn't want me to turn it off.

"It's bedtime Tommy, time for the TV to go to sleep." I said.

But then, a man with a british accent came on the TV, catching me off guard.

"Welcome back to Nigel Thornberry's Animal World. We are now in China, where we will be looking at the cute, cuddly, panda bear." The man on TV said.

I turned to see a man with red hair and a red mustash, surrounded by fields of bamboo before me on the television screen.

"Nigel Strawberry!" Tommy cried in a tiny squeaky voice behind me.

I turned around, looking a bit confused.

"Wait a minute Tommy, did you just call the man on TV Nigel Strawberry?" I asked.

"Uh huh." Tommy replied.

"I think his name is Nigel Thornberry." I said, only to start chuckling, realizing that maybe Thornberry was too difficult for him to say, so he called him strawberry instead.

Tommy quickly got engaged in the show, so I decided I'd let him watch the rest of this, and then, it was time for bed. After all, Peter and crew weren't back from his castle yet, so as long as I had Tommy in bed before they returned, I wasn't too worried. However, I had had enough TV, plus, I wasn't up for watching a nature show, so decided to go get the dishes done in the kitchen while he watched the movie, so as soon as Peter, Dil, and my sisters returned, we could more or less, head off to bed. While I was cleaning up though, the phone rang. I picked it up, finding it was Mrs. Pickles, wanting to tell Tommy goodnight, because she contacted Peter, and he told her that Tommy was with me, to call the house.

"Yes, Tommy's with me, and he hasn't gone to bed quite yet, but he will be soon as soon as Nigel Thornberry is over." I said into the phone.

"So how is he doing?" Mrs. Pickles asked me.

I filled her in on what all went on that day, including the trip to the doctor's, letting her know he did have an ear infection and that he was on an antibiotic four times a day for the next ten days, so it's likely he'd still be on it when she returned. I also let her know that his throat was also hurting, so they took a strep test, and they'd be calling us with the results within the next day or two when they came back from the lab, since, it was going around.

She then went on to tell me that her meetings were going well, but that poor Stu had seen better days, when he ran into somebody at his convention, who had more or less, ripped him off, leaving him feeling very upset. Mrs. Pickles told me she had to leave her meeting early that day to go tend to her husband, to which I simply responded, I hope he can work things out with this guy, and that everything was going to be okay.

"So is Tommy still awake? Can I tell him goodnight?" Mrs. Pickles asked into the phone.

"Let me go check, hold the phone." I said, setting the phone down on the counter, and heading back into the living room, to see that Nigel was no longer on the TV, rather, it was the news, and Tommy, was nowhere in sight.

"Tommy! Your mommy's on the phone and wants to say hello! Tommy? Where are you?" I called, turning off the TV at this point since nobody was watching it, but I got no response.

I frantically looked all over the living room, even under the couch and easy chairs, but he was nowhere to be found. Starting to grow worried, but not wishing to make his mother stall for too much longer, I ran into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and told her I'd call her back. Though I probably couldn't call her back right away, seeing I couldn't remember her number for beans, so would need Peter's help, but right then, I was more worried about finding Tommy than anything.

I searched the entire house, calling his name, hoping he'd answer me back. Then, no sooner was I to the top of the stairs, when I heard a loud crash from the direction of his and Dil's room. I went into the bedroom, to see every trace of Reptar in the room, had been hidden in the closet, and I only knew this because the tail of one of his Reptar toys was sticking out the closet door when he tried to close it, and the crash I heard, was his Reptar nightlight falling to the floor from his dresser, splintering into several pieces of glass. I saw Tommy, standing near the dresser, a sad expression on his face, just inches from the chards of glass on the carpet.

"Tommy, what's wrong?" I asked.

He didn't answer me, just, tried to walk forward, but I stopped him, not wishing for him to step on any of the glass.

"Tommy, stay still and let me get this glass cleaned up." I said, but he knelt down and tried to help me clean it up, to which I snatched it out of his hands.

"You're going to cut yourself, just, don't, touch." I yelled, scooting him into a corner, while I ran and found the vacuum cleaner, and saw to cleaning up the mess in his room.

"Well, bye bye Reptar nightlight." I said, upon turning off the vacuum, getting rid of what remained of the nightlight, which was the cord plugged into the wall and the base of the unit which once contained a lightbulb, which also broke upon it falling to the floor.

Tommy however didn't seem to care, as he slowly came out of his hiding place, went over to his bed, where he now had a plain blue blanket on the bed instead of the Reptar quilt that use to be there, and he crawled into bed, buried his face in his pillow, and started crying.

"Tommy, what is it?" I asked, going over and laying a gentle hand on his back, wanting to cheer him up, but he wasn't having it, as he completely ignored me at this point.

Not wanting Peter to enter a completely dark room trying to put a sleeping Dil to bed when they returned, I went in search for another nightlight. Luckily, I found one of those wall outlet ones in the upstairs lennon closet on one of the higher shelves. It was a duck, but I didn't care, and I didn't think either Tommy nor Dil would care at this point either. I found an empty outlet on a wall near the door, took off the child safety cover, plugged it in, turned it on, turned off the top light, and headed back downstairs, leaving poor Tommy to cry himself to sleep.

" _I wish I could have helped him, or knew what was wrong._ " I thought to myself, slumping down in one of the purplish pink easy chairs in the living room, waiting for everybody to return, but it was no use.

Tommy was upset about something, he was ready to go to bed, and with the long, lousy day he had, maybe it was just, his way of finally putting an end to the day. I'd worry if things were still a course of concern come tomorrow morning, because no sooner had I been sitting in the chair for roughly twenty minutes, when I heard a key turn in the front door, and Peter, carrying a sleeping Dil in one arm, and escorting my two younger sisters, both of which, looked pretty tired at this point, came inside.

Peter headed upstairs with Dil, and before I could say anything, a sobbing Sabrina ran into my arms.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I had made a beautiful Valentine for Tommy, but then Angelica came along, and ruined it, claiming sick people can't celebrate Valentine's Day." Sabrina explained through her sobs.

"The nerve of that little girl!" I screamed loudly, hoping I didn't awaken Tommy or Dil.

Luckily, Peter came back downstairs at that point, overhearing my loud comment.

"I know, I'm not too happy with Angelica either. That's why I agreed to have her come here after school tomorrow, to help Sabrina make a new valentine, as punishment for her careless and wreckless behavior." Peter said, taking a seat on the couch.

"Well, maybe I can have Tommy make a valentine for Sabrina tomorrow, assuming he's feeling better, for him to give to Sabrina after school. However, right now, it's time for everyone, to be getting to bed. It's late!" I said, glancing up at a clock on the wall, noticing it was way after eleven at night.

And so, Peter and I saw to getting Sabrina and Madeline ready for bed, since he tells me Dil had fallen asleep at the party, and while on the way back, he got him changed into some pajamas he had brought with him, putting him to bed upon getting back. He then asked me what was up with the ducky nightlight and where was the Reptar one, to which I explained how something must have gone on while I was on the phone with Mrs. Pickles, tempting Tommy to go hide all of his Reptar things in the closet, and from the look on his face, he was pretty upset, but I couldn't get him to talk to me, as he was obviously too tired at this point.

"He was asleep when I put Dil to bed." Peter said.

"I'm not surprised. Poor little guy isn't feeling good at all, though despite all of this, we did have a lovely evening together, and one word, says it all. Reptar." I said.

"Why am I not surprised?" Peter asked, helping me brush Madeline's teeth.

I simply chuckled at his comment, as I led her out of the bathroom, finished helping the girls put on their pajamas, and since Sabrina had her evening more or less, ruined by Angelica, I decided to cheer her up, by reading them their bedtime book, and reading them their Frozen book. After finishing the story, I got them tucked into bed, and I saw that Peter was also heading to bed before me tonight, which was a change from the norm, seeing he's usually the last one in bed it seems.

" _Guess his party tired him out._ " I thought to myself, as I went downstairs and saw to turning out lights, only to notice that at a point during the day, Peter had brought the mail in.

Flipping through it right quick, putting aside stuff for the Pickles, I saw there was something addressed to me, Helen O'Mally. Curious, I tore open the envelope, to see it was a letter from Bobby Lee. This totally took me by surprise, because I never gave Bobby their address, but I'd worry about that later, as I read the lovely letter, which, I'll keep to myself, don't wish to put down what he had to say to me, seeing there are somethings, you keep secret from your parents.

I then realized I had never fed the dogs, and I didn't recall Peter doing it, at least, come dinner time. He's been fooling with them in the mornings, seeing he's the first one awake usually, so I went out back and took care of it right quick, giving Spike and Spiffy each a treat, and then, decided it was high time, to call it a night myself.

So I turned out the lights and headed up to bed, little did I know, I wouldn't be falling asleep for several hours.

End of Nell POV

And sure enough, no sooner had she gotten ready for bed, finished writing her journal entry for the day, and was about to turn off the lamp on the bed side table and close her eyes, when she heard the sounds, of crying, and non-stop coughing, coming from down the hall.

And this, ends chapter 4. What has Tommy so upset? And who's about to keep poor Nell up all night long? Find out, next time.

Author's Note: If you want to know what took place at the Valentine's Day party itself, I suggest you read chapter 42, of Ask the Dynamic Trio. Also, I own the OC of Sherry Berry, and I originally introduced that version of Reptar on Ice, in my story, Days in the Life of Dil Pickles. I was also inspired by the following episodes of Rugrats where this chapter was concerned. The Shot, Incident in Isle Seven, and New Kid in Town, in fact, that's where Josh, the kid Tommy ran into at the doctor's office, came from. Also, the firecracker popcickles further inspired the Reptar popcickles, as they, too, have jokes on the stick. Only difference is, I'm trying to make the jokes on the Reptar ones different from the ones on the firecracker ones, so as to not look like I'm copying them entirely. Oh yeah, I was also inspired by Runaway Reptar, and The Big Showdown, which I believe it was in this episode where Tommy is watching the tail end of Reptar vs. The Aliens at the start of the episode. And oh yeah, the part at the beginning of the chapter when Tommy awakens, crying in pain, is referencing something that took place with me, nearly twenty years ago, back in March of 1997, when I awoke one Friday morning, with an excruciating pain in my throat, that led me to cry as well. The same held true a week later the following Saturday, when I awoke to find my ear hurting, and turns out I had an ear infection, though at first, we thought I had Strep, but I never did, well, I decided to put this all into one swoop, and touch upon this unpleasant moment from my childhood. Though we'll also be touching upon it again, in a more positive sense in a couple of weeks, but that milestone, will be touched upon, in my second most popular ongoing story to date, that one being, Rugrat Bloopers. And oh yeah, one more thing. The movie, The Captain Blasto Lego Movie, was obviously a parody, of the recent movie that came out, The Batman Lego Movie. Funny that I did that, seeing that the person who voices Captain Blasto, is also the voice of Batman. Anyway, hopefully I covered everything I needed to reference in this chapter, and here's hoping, I'll be back soon, with more chapters in this story, as we're about halfway through this story, if you don't count the epilogue.


	5. Wednesday, Sleep Deprived

Author's Note: Reviews seem to be broken again, where I'm getting the email notifications, but they're not showing up on Fan Fiction's website. No worries, to Boris Yeltsin, DemonAloisTrancy, and Sofia2017Planning, all of which, left reviews on chapter 4, thank you so very much for your reviews, and I'll see to replying to them once Fan Fiction fixes this glitch, and they show up on the website. No matter, while I'm a bit annoyed by a few things, including taking a much longer nap this afternoon than I intended on doing, let's try to shake it off, and move on, to the next chapter of this story!

Chapter 5, Wednesday, Sleep Deprived

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

I'm sorry if this entry is much shorter than the rest of them have been so far, but as the subject states, I am, very much, sleep deprived. In fact, I more or less, spent most of Wednesday sleeping, after having to stay awake the entire night with Tommy, and for part of the time, Dil. I was already exhausted late Tuesday evening, after having a very long day with Tommy, and the scare he gave me very late that evening when he ran off to his room to hide all of his Reptar things and knocked his nightlight off of the dresser when I went looking for him to have him tell his parents goodnight over the phone, didn't help matters any. I can say one thing holds true for both, little boys and little girls of the young age of three. Sick or not, both genders, are indeed, a handful.

So anyway, as I was about to lie down and get me some sleep, I heard some crying and coughing down the hall. Curious and worried, I went to see what was the matter. I got there to find it was coming from the boys' room, and when I went inside, I saw Tommy sitting on the floor, hunched over, like he was about to throw up, coughing uncontrollably, and poor Dil, sitting on the edge of his toddler bed, balling his eyes out. While I wanted to give Dil a hug, I knew Tommy's situation was more serious, so I attended to him first. I also went and got him a bucket out of the bathroom and brought it back, in the event his massive coughing spell led him to throwing up, and sure enough, I got it there just in time, as that's what happened. I got him cleaned up and into a fresh pair of pajamas, since some of it did dribble down his chin and all over the front of the pajamas he was wearing, and then, poor Dil, who had come over, still crying a little bit, worried for his older brother, I gave him a hug and gently patted him on the back.

"It's okay Dil, your brother is going to be okay." I whispered, gently rocking back and force and trying to get him calmed down.

A few minutes later, while I managed to get Dil to go back to sleep, poor Tommy, was still wide awake. As much as it pains me to say this, while I so wanted to wake up Peter and head back to bed myself, I knew that wasn't an option, as looks like I had a long night ahead of me with the young three-year-old toddler. We headed downstairs so as to not keep anybody awake, though at a point, Sabrina awoke to use the bathroom, and she wanted to help take care of Tommy, to which I told her, she needed to go back to bed, because she had school the next morning. I thought she was going to argue with me, but no, rather, she went back up to bed and I didn't see her again for the rest of the night.

"So Tommy, since you can't sleep, wanna watch one of the Reptar movies we didn't get time to watch earlier?" I asked, pulling the DVD's of Runaway Reptar and Reptar vs. The Aliens off of the shelf and bringing them over to the couch.

"No!" Tommy squeaked in a tiny voice, tossing the DVD's back in my face.

I was a little bit annoyed at him for throwing them at me, but I went and put them back on the shelf, and looked for something else for us to watch. I found a DVD called Sherry Berry Sings a Song of Spring, which was a concert, that I put on for him, and he seemed to enjoy that. While the DVD played, he went over to the playpen area of the living room and put together a block tower.

"Ah, are we building a castle Tommy?" I asked, admiring the work he had done.

He shook his head no.

"A sky scraper?" I asked.

Again, he shook his head no.

"Well what is it then?" I asked.

He just stared at me, a bit confused. Perhaps even he wasn't sure what he was building, so I let the matter drop and sat down on the couch, watching the rest of the concert on DVD. A lot of the music sounded vaguely familiar, recall hearing it from my childhood, and later that night, I got Tommy to sip on some ginger ale, and we played a game of Connect Four, and a game of Hi-Ho Cherry-O, which, he won every time. Tommy was very good about playing by the rules, though I'd find out later on, that his cousin Angelica, isn't exactly like that.

Luckily, Tommy never threw up the ginger ale I gave to him, which meant his massive coughing fit was what probably led him to throwing up. Thank goodness, he already had a bad cold, soar throat, and ear infection, the poor thing didn't need a stomach bug on top of everything else. Not sure what time it was when we finally grew tired enough to go back to sleep, but I'm pretty sure I felt myself growing tired before he did, as I lay down on the couch, my head against a pillow at one end, about ready to slam my eyes shut.

Tommy climbed on top of me, resting his head on my chest, and the next thing I knew, I was out like a light. I'm not sure how long we slept, all I know is I vaguely heard the dogs barking from outside in the backyard at a point, my two younger sisters and Dil jabbering at one point, with Peter saying something or another, but by the time I finally became fully conscious again, sunlight was streaming in brightly through the living room windows, the smell of baritoes filled the room, and Peter was shaking me awake. I also noticed Tommy was no longer on top of me. Panicking, I sat upright, like something was seriously wrong.

"Tommy! Where's Tommy?" I asked in a panic.

"Relax, relax Helen, he's fine. I've got everything under control." Peter said, smiling down at me, as he stood before me, looking at my wrinkled up nightgown and my hair, which I'm sure was a mess.

"Okay, what time is it? What's going on?" I asked in between breaths.

"Calm down, it's ten o'clock in the morning, but you don't have to worry, I took care of everything. I got Sabrina and Madeline off to school, which Dil went with me, as when I came downstairs and found you and Tommy asleep on the couch, I didn't dare disturb your rest. In fact, made my specialty omlets for breakfast for me and the girls, got Spike and Spiffy fed, got everyone ready for school, and we headed on our way. Dil wanted hash browns though, so after I got the girls off to school, I had my limo driver swing by Boingo Burger, which now serves breakfast, and brought back hash browns, a chocolate-chip pancakes kids breakfast for Tommy, and a Boingo Burger's Breakfast Berito for you. Would you like it?" Peter asked me.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, as my stomach growled.

"Yes." I said, following Peter into the kitchen, where I sat down at the table, and he served me the berito on a plate along with a cup of orange juice.

"So where are Tommy and Dil? And did you remember to give Tommy his morning dose of his antibiotic?" I asked, after taking a bite of my berito and having some juice to wash it down.

"Yes, Tommy had his morning meds an hour ago with his pancake after I returned home with Dil from dropping Sabrina and Madeline off at school and picking up your breakfast. He was awake and trying to find something to watch on TV. I tried to put on the Reptar show for him on Hulu, only sadly, today was the day it was removed. He didn't seem to mind much, though he got a little fussy when I almost poured his juice into his Reptar sippy cup, so quickly switched to something else, a plain blue one I think. No matter, he's eaten and so has Dil, and they're now upstairs playing in their room. I put on the story book of Pinoccio for them to listen to while they played." Peter explained to me, as he took a seat across from me at the table, while I saw to eating my breakfast.

"But, I thought we agreed that today I'd take my sisters to school." I said.

"Don't worry about it. Tell you what, you take them to school and pick them up on the final two days of your stay. Tomorrow is a regular school day, with one difference. Everybody is going to the preschool because it's a special day for the preschool and kindergarten classes to do a special project together, and Friday is a teacher in service day, which means Sabrina and Madeline will only have a half day of school." Peter reminded me.

I had already known about these things, but they had sort of slipped my mind, with everything that had been going on this week.

"Don't worry Peter, I remember." I said, taking the last bite of my berito.

"Now, sounds like you had quite a rough night, and you still look pretty tired." Peter said.

I went on to explain to him what all had happened, and that yes, I was still feeling quite tired. He suggested that I more or less, take the day off and go get some sleep.

"But Peter…" I said.

"No, you go on ahead. You earned it. Not only did you let me sleep last night when Tommy and Dil awoke you, making you stay up all night, but you did a huge favor for me last night, looking after Tommy while I saw to hosting my annual Valentine's Day party at my castle, something that would have had to have been canceled, had you not been around to help out." Peter said.

I took a sip of my juice and smiled.

"It's no problem Peter, I was happy to take care of Tommy. Our evening went just fine until the Reptar shipwreck and tears that spilled at the end of the day." I said.

"Yeah I've noticed Tommy's been off a bit today too." Peter said.

"Has he done anything like this before? I mean, I know I haven't known him as long as you have, so was just wondering." I asked.

"Well, around the time his grandfather moved out, the second time, as he's moved out twice in the time I've known the Pickles, this was the second time before we went to Paris and he met Lulu, or shall I say, reunited with her after many years apart, as I found out later they originally met one another when Lou was fighting in the war, Tommy buried all of his Reptar things in the sandbox out back, thinking his grandpa moved away because of Reptar, but nothing like what I've been witnessing this morning." Peter said.

"Yeah, it's like, any time we mention Reptar or try to present something Reptar related to him, he cries or gets angry." I said, letting out a huge yawn.

"Tell you what, you go get some sleep, and I'll hold down the fort, and see if I can't figure out what's got Tommy so upset. I've known him since he was a tiny baby, well okay, so he was a-year-old, but I've known him since before his little brother was born, surely I can perhaps, get him to talk to me, or possibly find some clues that might lead to what's going on." Peter said.

I stood up from my place at the table, finished with my breakfast, when a realization hit me, that I decided to fill Peter in on right fast.

"When I went back into the living room to get Tommy to come tell his parents goodnight, the Nigel Thornberry show he had been watching on TV had ended, and the news was on." I stated, about to head out of the kitchen, upstairs to Mr. and Mrs. Pickles bedroom to get some more sleep.

"That's probably it!" Peter said.

I turned in the doorway from the kitchen out to the hall near the stairs and agknowledged him.

"What's it?" I asked.

"Do you think, something came up on the news about Reptar that got him upset?" Peter asked.

"It's quite possible." I replied.

"You go take a nap, I'm about to start getting lunch ready for the boys and check on them, and in the meantime, I'll look online and on the TV and see if I can't track down anything about Reptar that might have come up recently in the news that has Tommy so upset." Peter said.

"Thank you Peter." I said, turning to leave the kitchen, when he called one final thing after me.

"Remember, Angelica is coming home with Sabrina and Madeline today. Just for the afternoon though, and possibly supper, if her parents have to stay late at work for meetings or anything like that. Trust me, it's been known to happen before, and at the last minute too." Peter said.

I let out a reluctant sigh as I trudged up the stairs towards the bedroom to have me a second nap.

" _I only hoped I didn't awaken to an Angelica disaster later on._ " I thought to myself, as I climbed into bed, pulled the covers up over my head, and more or less, immediately, drifted back off to sleep.

Several hours must have passed, as by the time I awoke, I could hear the annoying sound of Angelica's voice downstairs. I put on my robe and slippers, went downstairs, and headed into the kitchen where Tommy, Dil, Madeline, Sabrina and Angelica along with Peter were sitting around the kitchen table, with the Hi-Ho Cherry-O board game out on the table. Sabrina and Angelica were playing the game together, and while it was obvious my sister was following the rules, Angelica, was not. She was doing everything just the opposite of the spinner in the middle. When you were suppose to take one, two, three, or four cherries off of your tree and place them into your bucket, she'd put them all back. When she landed on the dog or the bird, instead of putting two cherries back on her tree, she pick two cherries from her tree. And her biggest move of cheating, was when she'd land on the bucket of spilled cherries, she'd take them all off of her tree and put them into her bucket, proclaiming herself the winner, when in actuality, you're suppose to put all of your cherries that are already in your bucket, back on to the tree.

"I win Sabrina!" Angelica cackled evily, landing on the bucket of spilled cherries again, as she placed every last cherry on her tree into her bucket.

"You didn't win, you cheated." Sabrina snapped.

Angelica growled.

"Sabrina's right Angelica, you did cheat. When you land on the bucket, all of your cherries are suppose to go back on to the tree. And Tommy, stop chewing on your hand." Peter said.

I glanced over at where Tommy was sitting, to see that he did indeed, have his left hand in his mouth and was chewing on it.

" _Wow! He hasn't done this before._ " I thought to myself, as he removed his hand, where I saw several teeth marks on the skin.

I turned to Peter, who I could tell looked worried.

"I'm guessing you've never seen Tommy exhibit this type of behavior before." I said.

"No." Peter replied.

We watched the girls play one more game of Hi-Ho Cherry-O, but when Angelica failed to play by the rules one last time, Sabrina and Madeline proclaimed they had had enough, and we put the game away. After that, all of the kids went off to play and watch TV in the living room, while Peter and I saw to getting dinner ready, which we decided to make simple, heating up cans of soup.

"So, did you have a nice long nap?" Peter asked.

"Yes I did. How did things go here this afternoon?" I asked.

"Well still haven't quite figured out the mystery behind this Reptar boycott with Tommy, but everybody had lunch, he's had his lunchtime and afternoon doses of his antibiotic, and I did get him and Dil to take a nap this afternoon. I put Tommy up in his room when Dil and I left to pick up your sisters and Angelica, and as soon as we returned after everybody had a snack of some chocolate-chip cookies I baked while the kids were napping, I had Angelica and Sabrina remake Tommy's Valentine, which, Sabrina gave to him shortly before you came downstairs and they started playing Hi-Ho Cherry-O." Peter explained, opening a can of the broccoli chetter soup I had picked up at the store the previous day.

"I see. Did he like it?" I asked.

"Yes. It was pink with glitter all over it, so don't know if it's what Tommy would have picked, but I managed to talk Sabrina out of drawing a picture of Reptar on the card. She asked why, to which I told her, we'd talk about it later, to focus on making the card something original, and Angelica helped her put on the glitter." Peter said.

"Good, so, do you think Angelica's been punished enough?" I asked.

"I think so, and her father texted me, asking if we could feed her dinner before they pick her up at six-thirty, to which I said yes, so make sure to dish up a bowl of soup for Angelica as well as the other four kids Helen." Peter instructed.

"Yes sir." I said, attending to heating up the cans of soup on the stove, and seeing to dishing up bowls once they were ready.

We decided to let the kids watch some TV in the living room while they ate, making sure we watched that they were careful. Sabrina wanted to watch the Reptar on Ice DVD, to which Peter and I shook our heads, but maybe if Tommy had food in front of him, he'd be less likely to get mad or upset. He ate his dinner, but as soon as he finished, he asked to go potty and never came back. I'd worry about him later, as at least he disappeared upstairs, so he didn't leave the house so that was something. I think the most interesting event of the evening, was when I served Angelica her bowl of broccoli chetter soup, I got this comment from her.

"Hey! What are you trying to do Nell, poison me?" Angelica asked, rolling her eyes at me.

"Well, no." I replied, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I turned to see that Peter had come up behind me, to which he had me head into the kitchen, and explained to me that Angelica doesn't like broccoli, so her idea of that soup, is broccoli chetter soup, hold the broccoli. I simply chuckled and then realizing he was serious, while Angelica had managed to slerp up all of her soup with a straw, that was meant for her drink, leaving behind the pieces of broccoli in the bowl, because she had nicely helped Sabrina make a new Valentine for Tommy, I gave her some of the bake potato soup that was for me and Peter, and told her that as long as she ate five bites of the soup, she could get dessert.

She fussed a little, and nearly knocked the bowl of soup out of my hand, but I told her if she stopped kicking, she'd get three cookies for dessert if she ate her five bites. I'm not normally one for bribing, but sometimes, it has to be done. We got through dinner more or less, by the time the ice show ended on DVD and I gave Angelica her cookies to take with her, since no sooner had she finished, when her father had arrived to pick her up. I was the one to answer the door when the doorbell rang.

"Well hello Helen, I wasn't expecting to see you here this week." Drew said.

"Peter didn't tell you? I've been here all week. That's why he was able to host his Valentine's Day party last night, while Tommy was cared for, seeing that Mr. and Mrs. Pickles are out of town. Oh, wait, you're also a Mr. Pickles, sorry about that. I mean, Stu and Didi." I said, stepping aside to let Drew walk into the house.

"Oh, I knew, guess I've just, had a long day at work." Drew said, heading into the living room, where he saw to collecting his daughter.

"Time to go Princess." I heard him say, as Angelica got up and headed back towards the entry hallway with her father.

I then handed the ziplock bag of cookies to her father and saw them out the door. Then, we had the task of getting Tommy to come downstairs and take his evening meds and have some dessert. I was about to go see to this task, when Peter had already done it, as he was coming down the stairs with Tommy and took him into the kitchen, where he saw to getting Tommy his antibiotic, along with Vitamins and Florride for him and Dil. I just stood back, letting out a little sigh, feeling like I didn't need to be needed, when Madeline and Sabrina startled me from behind.

"Read us a story! Read us a story!" Madeline and Sabrina pleaded, grabbing at my ankles, nearly dragging me down to the floor.

"Girls, what's the magic word?" I asked.

"Please?" Sabrina asked.

"Pretty please?" Madeline chimed in after her.

"Okay girls, let's get you two ready for bed, and then, we'll read a story." I said, making sure Peter was okay with getting Tommy and Dil to bed tonight.

He was fine with that, so I saw to getting them ready for bed, as well as giving Sabrina a regular bath, and Madeline another sponge bath, while washing her hair in the sink. I then introduced them to the book of Mulan, and after that was done, I tucked them in, and they drifted off to sleep.

I saw it was only shortly after eight in the evening, but I'm guessing I, too, even after having a long nap that afternoon, I was still feeling sleep deprived, so I peered into the bathroom where Peter was giving Tommy and Dil their bath, letting him know I was heading off to bed early. Everybody told me goodnight, well, Peter told me goodnight anyway. I believe Tommy and Dil were too busy playing in the tub to notice me, but at that moment, I didn't care. I headed off to my bedroom for the week, pulled back the covers, lay down, and saw to heading off to sleep.

I still didn't know what had Tommy so upset, and I may have done much less today than I had done the day before, but I must thank Peter for giving me this much needed break, after having a very long day before, while he saw to hosting his party. I guess, we have thanked one another, and paid one another back for helping one another out. Anyway, that's going to be it for today, but knowing how much mischief my sisters, Tommy and Dil can cause, while we only have three days left to our week together, I'm sure there'll be plenty for me to see to in the days ahead.

End of Nell POV

And with those final words, she closed her notebook, stashed it away in her bag, turned off the lamp on the bed side table, and drifted off to sleep.

And this, ends chapter 5. Will we ever learn what had Tommy so upset where Reptar is concerned? Hopefully, we'll find out the next day, AKA, the next chapter of this story.

Author's Note: I made a small reference to Acorn Nuts and Diapied Butts, Part 2, and the game, Hi-Ho Cherry-O, was my very first board game I played when I was three-years-old, and today, I'm now fondly introducing to my nephew when we spend time together. Like Angelica, he tries to make up his own rules of the game, but not nearly as drastically as she did in the chapter. Anyway, I hope everybody enjoyed it, and I hope to be back with more chapters, sometime soon.


	6. Thursday, Sneaking Off

Author's Note: Finally! It's time for that long awaited update you've all been anxious for, yep, I'm finally about to present to you guys, the next chapter, of Nell's Adventures in Babysitting, seeing I'm getting started on writing the chapter at a quarter to nine at night, rather than after 10:00 at night, which has been the case the last few days, making me feel like there wasn't quite enough time to get something up before midnight in my timezone hit. No matter, on the evening of March 8, 2017, I'll finally bring it to you all, and I hope you enjoy! Also, I recently reposted chapter 5, which while it was originally posted on March 1 I believe, while reading it just now, I noticed some spelling errors that I went and fixed, like a word written twice and an extra letter that shouldn't have been there in one of my words that was bugging me, because my screen reader didn't read the word correctly. No matter, those have been fixed and the edited chapter has replaced what was originally there. With that out of the way, let's move on to chapter 6.

Chapter 6, Thursday, Sneaking Off

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

Well, after being awake all night the previous night, I slept like a rock the following night, passing out shortly after eight in the evening and not awakening until the alarm I had set on the clock I found in Mr. and Mrs. Pickles bedroom, went off at half past six the following day. Little did I know that despite sleeping all night, it was Peter's turn to suffer through a night of sleeplessness, as I got downstairs to find him, sitting at the kitchen table, constantly yawning and rubbing his eyes.

"Good morning Peter, is everything okay here?" I asked, pouring myself a glass of water from the fridge and taking a seat at the kitchen table.

"Yeah I'm fine, just, been awake much of the night with Sabrina and Tommy." Peter replied in between yawns.

"Well what happened?" I asked, taking a sip of my water.

Peter went on to explain to me that Sabrina was working on a project for school, and needed a set of magic markers, and several sheets of aluminum foil. When he saw it was three in the morning, he gave her the items she needed, and told her she really needed to go back to bed. She agreed and he went back off to bed, but could never get back to sleep.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear this Peter, but that reminds me, I've agreed to take the girls to school, since you've been very nicely taking them all week." I said.

"Thank you, because I could really use a nap." Peter said, letting out another yawn, just as I heard tiny footsteps enter the kitchen.

I turned to the doorway that led into the hall by the stairs, as there are two entrances to the Pickles kitchen, one that comes from the hall near the front door, and another that comes from the living room, I believe it's suppose to be a living room dining room, but Mr. and Mrs. Pickles use the dining room portion of that area as an indoor play place for their kids, and any other kids who they have come over, but just the same, in the doorway by the stairs, stood Sabrina, all dressed for school, and some strange contraption covered in alluminam foil with a face drawn where the head should be in magic marker.

"Morning Nell, morning Peter." Sabrina cheerfully greeted.

"Wow! You sure are excited to be going to school today." I said.

"Sure am, and I'm taking my science project with me to show Tommy's class! By the way, is Tommy well enough to go to preschool today? Today's the day all of the kindergarteners are going to preschool to do an art project and several games with them, and the preschoolers in turn, will get to experience a dose of all-day school, like what will happen when they start kindergarten in another year or two." Sabrina explained.

"Don't worry, I haven't forgotten Sabrina. I'll be taking you and your sister to the community center today, with bagged lunches, since the sheet Mrs. Lindaberry and Miss Jill sent home asked us to send you with lunches." I said.

"What about Tommy?" Sabrina asked.

"Remember when you two were awake in the middle of the night? I took Tommy's temperature and he still had a fever? Afraid he has to stay home and miss it." Peter said.

I saw a frown upon the face of my younger sister. I got up from the table and went to give her a hug.

"Now Sabrina, you can help Madeline with the day's activities, and after school, you can come home and tell Tommy all about it." I said.

"Okay. By the way, Madeline didn't want to get up." Sabrina said.

I let out a sigh as I headed up the stairs and saw to getting her out of bed.

"No! I don't wanna go to school!" Madeline wined.

"But Madeline, today is a very special day for you." I reminded her.

"No it's not. I'm going to preschool! I already finished preschool, I don't wanna go there no more!" Madeline screamed, waking up Dil in the next room who started crying.

"Now look what you did, you woke up Dil." I snapped, helping Madeline get into the bathroom and handing her her toothbrush and toothpaste.

"Brush your teeth while I go see about Dil." I said, leaving the bathroom to attend to the crying disturbed two-year-old.

"It's okay Dil, Nell's here." I said, coming over to the toddler bed, where he stood up, his diaper sagging beneath his pajama pants as he came over and started to calm down.

"Let's get you changed." I said, helping him to climb up on to the changing table, and getting him into a fresh diaper.

"Thanks." Dil said.

"Are you ready for breakfast or do you want to go back to sleep?" I asked.

After I changed his diapers and got him some fresh pajamas, since some of the contents of his diapers leaked out on to his pajama pants, he went and crawled back into his bed. I was so busy tied up with taking care of Dil, that I failed to notice that Tommy was missing. Little did I know what I would be faced with later on that day. No matter, I saw him back to bed, helped Madeline get dressed, which luckily by this time, once she was picking out an outfit to wear, she wasn't so fussy anymore, and saw to feeding my sisters their breakfast. I also let Peter know that Dil decided to sleep in this morning, and that he was free to go take a nap, I'd see to calling a cab and getting my sisters off to school. He agreed to take care of Tommy and Dil when they were ready to wake up later, and with those final words, he headed back upstairs to get some sleep. I fixed eggs for me and my three sisters, scrambled for me and Madeline, and a fried egg for Sabrina.

After breakfast, I let the girls play in the living room while I saw to packing their lunches, bologna sandwiches for both of them, and juice boxes of apple juice, called the cab, and soon, we were on our way to school. That's when the aluminam foiled contraption came along, to which Sabrina kept instructing to walk in different directions, including getting into a position on the floor of the cab.

"Wow Sabrina, I never knew you had it in you!" I said.

"Thanks Nell, I call him Tommy, after my boyfriend, and he's voice activated. Peter helped me with that part." Sabrina said.

"No he didn't." Madeline argued, sticking her tongue out at her.

"How do you know? You were asleep." Sabrina argued back.

"That's enough girls, let's calm down and get into the right frame of mind to head off to school." I said, turning my attention to the cab driver, letting him know we'd be heading to the community center.

"No!" Madeline wined, as the building came into view.

"Madeline we already talked about this. You and your class are coming here today to give the preschoolers a taste of kindergarten in their environment." I reminded her, but my little sister wasn't having it, as she started kicking my leg and biting my hand.

"Madeline! Stop it!" I screamed over her loud sobs.

"No!" Madeline cried, as the cab pulled up to the curb near the entrance.

"Is this where you'd like to get out?" The driver asked.

"Yes sir, this will be fine." I said, getting my little sisters out of the car and walking them into the building.

Sabrina was an angel, helping to escort her science experiment, while I dealt with a fussy Madeline all the way to Miss Weamer's classroom.

"Good morning Helen." Mrs. Lindaberry and Miss Jill greeted us when we got there.

Luckily when Madeline saw her teacher, she calmed down and headed into the classroom, where she went and played with some of the toys, while I told Sabrina goodbye, went in and did the same with Madeline, and then spoke to their teachers for a minute, making sure I'd be picking them up here after school in the afternoon.

"Just to clarify, I'll be picking up Sabrina and Madeline here at the community center?" I asked.

"Yes that's correct. The only kids that will be transported back to Doodle Dale Elementary School are those who go to after school daycare programs, as those buses pick up at the elementary school, not here." Mrs. Lindaberry said.

"Okay this is good to know, thank you." I said, waving goodbye and heading outside to wait for the cab, as when I scheduled the cab, I scheduled for one to bring us there, and another to come back fifteen minutes later.

Little did I know what I'd be in for later that morning, as I got home and found Peter awake at the kitchen table, all in a panic, feeding Dil some Reptar Cereal for breakfast.

"What's wrong?" I asked upon walking into the kitchen.

"I can't find Tommy anywhere!" Peter exclaimed.

"I'll gladly help you look." I said, putting my purse down where I had been stashing it for the week and seeing to helping Peter look all over the house.

We called Tommy's name and looked everywhere. Inside the bathtub, under furniture, and every place we could see a three-year-old boy crawling into, but no Tommy anywhere. I was about to call the Police when I walked into the kitchen to find the phone ringing. I ran over to the phone on the wall and picked it up.

"Hello?" I said upon answering the phone.

"Is this the Pickles Residence?" Miss Weamer's voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Yes it is, this is Helen O'Mally speaking." I said.

"Yes. Listen, did you send Tommy to school along with Sabrina and Madeline, two of our kindergarten guests?" Miss Weamer asked.

"No, Tommy is home sick, though Peter and I are watching him for the week, and we can't seem to find him around here anywhere." I said.

"Well you should know, he's at school, and he has a very high fever. He's barely conscious, and we need somebody to come pick him up right away." Miss Weamer said.

"Either Peter or myself will be on our way." I said, hanging up the phone, breathing a sigh of relief.

" _Thank goodness we know where he is._ " I thought to myself, but I was still a bit confused.

How on earth did Tommy get there in the first place? Before I could ponder anything any further, Peter came into the room, at which time, I informed him of the phone call I had just received from Tommy's teacher, and that he was at preschool with a high fever, and we've been asked to come pick him up. I explained that one of us would be there shortly.

"I'll get my limo driver to come take you and I'll stay here with Dil." Peter said.

"Thank you Peter, as while I could get another cab, I'd prefer to have somebody who will wait for me so Tommy and I don't have to wait for a cab to come back and pick us up." I said.

"My thoughts exactly." Peter said, composing a text on his iPhone to his limo driver.

The limo showed up within the next ten minutes and I was off once again to the community center, where I found the kids playing outside. I saw Sabrina playing over on the blacktop area on a chalk drawing of Hopscotch, and she didn't look happy to see me.

"Sabrina, where's Tommy?" I blerted out, not giving my sister a proper greeting, but I didn't really care at that very moment.

"We were flying in outside space, when Captain Tommy crash landed on who knows where, and left his crew behind on Planet Hopscotch." Sabrina said.

I would have found her make believe adventure rather amusing under normal circumstances, but not right then.

"Okay Sabrina, enough with the imaginary play. Where is Tommy?" I asked impatiently.

Sabrina pouted, not looking amused, as she could tell I was pretty angry with her, but then, she told me.

"He's over by the tree in the grass with Chuckie." Sabrina said, pointing over to a tree where Chuckie was sitting beneath it, his back against the trunk and Tommy, resting his head against his shoulder.

I went over to the tree to find that Tommy was barely conscious, and next to Chuckie in the grass was a blue backpack. Thinking it was Tommy's backpack, I picked it up, and got Tommy out of Chuckie's lap.

"Hey! Where are you taking Tommy?" Chuckie asked.

"I'm sorry Chuckie, but I have to take him home." I said.

"But, he needs me!" Chuckie cried, grabbing on to the skirt of my dress.

"Chuckie, let go. Tommy will be better in a few days, but I'm now feeling his forehead and he's really warm." I said, feeling his forehead and noticing this.

Luckily he was asleep in my arms while all of this was going on, but Chuckie went on to tell me how he was running and jumping, trying to imitate a spaceship, when he grew hot and tired and nearly passed out on the pavement. Chuckie drug him over to the tree where they both rested, as even he was feeling tired, and he didn't wish for either one of them to get hurt by other kids running around. I looked over to see Madeline and her friend Reggie playing happily on the swings, and Sabrina had run off to play with some other kids on a huge play structure with slides. As I was about to head to the limo in the parking lot with Tommy in my arms, I overheard Zack talking to a group of toddlers that got me curious.

"I already toldid you guys, he's not dead!" Zack cried.

Curious, I went over to tell him hello and see what was up.

"Who's not dead Zack?" I asked.

Before Zack could even notice I was there and answer my question, I received a tap on the shoulder. I turned around to find that both, Mrs. Lindaberry and Miss Weamer had approached me.

"Oh, Helen, thank goodness you've arrived." Miss Weamer said.

"And I see you found Tommy. Not long after we started circle time and our special guest came to present the story about the blind artist and our art activities before recess time, Tommy came out from beneath some aluminum foil and nearly scared us half to death, while surprising several of the kids." Mrs. Lindaberry explained.

"Come again?" I asked, a bit confused at first, but then it hit me.

The two teachers led me into the classroom while Miss Jill saw to rounding up all of the kids to bring them inside, as recess was nearly over. They showed me what Tommy had been under, and as I took a closer look at the large pieces of foil and the magic marker face on one piece of it, it suddenly hit me what had happened. The teachers went on to tell me that they didn't think much of Tommy showing up, until they saw him collapse on the playground and one of them took his temperature to find he had a fever of one-hundred and one. That's when they called to see if somebody could come pick him up.

"He hasn't had his medicine today, but not to worry, I'll handle this." I said, just as the students filed into the classroom and took seats at little toddler sized tables that were set up all around the classroom.

However, I asked Miss Weamer to keep an eye on Tommy, while I had a word with my little sister Sabrina. She agreed and I did just that.

"Sabrina Marie O'Mally, come with me this instant." I snapped, getting her attention.

I took her off into a deserted bathroom a short ways down the hall, and had a firm word with her. As soon as I closed the door behind me and found nobody in sight, I had a firm word with her.

"What were you thinking?" I asked.

"I'm sorry Nell, I really wanted Tommy to come to school with me, and when Peter tooked his temp and said he couldn't go, we came up with this plan." Sabrina said in between sobs, as she had started crying.

"And you thought you could sneak him off to school as a science project. You thought you could get away with lying, and not only get Tommy in trouble, not to mention, he's sicker thanks to you, but sending a sick child to school can get that child's parents into some serious trouble as well. I don't know what's going to happen, but I surely hope Mr. and Mrs. Pickles don't get in trouble for this." I said.

"I'm sorry." Sabrina said again.

"You need to learn a lesson young lady, as you were quite selfish into manipulating Tommy into doing this. Did he even want to go?" I asked.

"Well, yes and no. He didn't really feel good, but he didn't want me to be sad, so he agreed to the plan." Sabrina said.

"I understand that you have a crush on him, but you should be more concerned about him getting well so he can return to school next week. I'm sorry Sabrina, but I have no choice." I said, coming around from behind her and lifting up the skirt of the pink dress she was wearing that day.

"What are you going to do?" Sabrina asked nervously.

I pulled down her underpants and gave her a good spanking on her bottom, thankful nobody was in sight at that time. She was crying, but I couldn't think of any better punishment, and if I could swear Sabrina to secrecy, then nobody would have to know.

"That hurt!" Sabrina cried when I was finished and pulled her pants back up, letting down the skirt of her dress.

I turned her around and held her face in both of my hands, forcing her to look directly at me.

"You tell nobody about this, you understand? Not Tommy, not Madeline, not anybody. Understand?" I asked in a stirn tone of voice.

"I promise." Sabrina said, sniffling back some tears.

I pulled out a package of tissues from my purse and helped her blow her nose and wipe the tears from her eyes, as I needed her to be all clean of tears when she returned to the classroom. Once she was cleaned up, I escorted her back to the classroom, where they were starting on the next activity, and I collected Tommy and what I thought to be his backpack, and took him to the limo, where we headed back to the house. By the time we got there, Tommy still hadn't awakened so I had Peter help me put him to bed in his room, and once we were downstairs and I saw Dil was busy playing in the living room and watching the Goober Show on TV, Peter and I headed into the kitchen where I filled him in on everything.

"So what are we going to do about Sabrina?" Peter asked when I was done explaining everything.

"Well, she's having to spend the remainder of the day at school without Tommy as her partner on the projects, which I think is a fair enough punishment." I lied, not telling him what her real punishment was before collecting Tommy and leaving the school.

Little did I know what I did would not be kept a secret for long. I then looked into the blue backpack of Tommy's to find a stuffed purple bear, an inhaler, and some of the art projects that had already been done that day.

"Wait a minute, that's WaWa." Peter commented, upon seeing me put the purple bear on the kitchen table.

"Who's WaWa?" I asked.

"Chuckie's favorite toy. His late mother made it for him when he was a tiny baby." Peter explained.

I then looked around for a name tag, and soon discovered that we had Chuckie's backpack.

"Uh oh, looks like we got Chuckie's backpack by mistake." I said.

"And Chuckie's inhaler is in there." Peter added.

"Does Chuckie suffer from Athma?" I asked.

"Not nearly as bad as his father, but yes, he was finally diagnosed with it shortly after his fourth birthday last summer." Peter replied.

"Well somebody needs to get this back to Chuckie, and I've already been there twice today." I said.

"I'll take care of it." Peter said, running off to get dressed and summoning his limo driver to return.

" _Thank goodness!_ " I thought to myself, noticing it was getting nearly close to lunch time.

I saw to fixing Dil some speghatti-o's for lunch, and I got Tommy up long enough to get into him a dose of his antibiotic and to drink some juice, so he wouldn't become dehydrated. After that, he obviously wanted to go back to sleep, so I let him do just that, at which time, Peter had returned, letting me know he got Chuckie's backpack returned to him.

"Did Tommy sneak his backpack out of here this morning by any chance?" I asked.

We both peered over at the hooks on the wall to find his blue Reptar backpack was still there.

"The Reptar backpack is Tommy's." Peter commented.

"Well then, that answers my question." I said, as we both sat down to have a lunch of some fruit salad and ham and cheese sandwiches.

We got Dil down for his nap, and I headed out later that afternoon to collect my sisters from the community center, thankful that neither one of them caused anymore mischief the rest of the day. Because they were good the rest of the day, I promised they could watch some TV when we got back to the Pickles house, assuming Tommy and Dil were still taking their naps. Madeline was all for it, as she showed me all of her art work she had made that day, like a picture of a star made out of dried glue and colored in with green crayons, and a picture she made of Jelly Bear traced on to a piece of paper using a stirerphome tray. She also told me about games they played where they had to be blindfolded and couldn't use their sight. She was a little nervous at first, but her friend Reggie helped her to feel better.

"I'm glad." I said, patting Madeline on the top of the head, as the limo drove us in the direction of the Pickles house.

However, while Madeline talked up a storm all the way home, Sabrina remained quiet. It was obvious she was still mad at me for spanking her, but I wasn't going to say anything. I figured I'd let her cool off, figuring she'd come around eventually. Little did I know she'd fail to keep her promise.

When we returned to the Pickles house, Tommy and Dil were still napping, and Peter was busy doing something on his phone, so I led my sisters into the living room, and Madeline wanted to watch My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic. I needed Peter's help since I couldn't remember if it was on TV or on one of those streaming sites like Netflix or Hulu, but turns out it would be on TV shortly so we got it to the right channel, and left my sisters to watch their TV show. I went into the kitchen to bury myself into a book, needing a bit of an escape for a while. However, while I was taking my breather, I heard several feet walk up and down the stairs a few times, and then some yelling from the living room. Realizing everybody was causing quite a bit of commotion, Peter and I decided we'd better go see what was going on.

When we arrived in the living room, I found Tommy wearing nothing but a diaper, Dil with the television remote, and everybody yelling at one another.

"I don't like the pony show." Tommy snapped in a squeaky voice, as he still had a bit of laryngitis.

"Well I don't like Reptar!" Madeline cried.

"Reptar is, dead." Tommy whispered, tears welling up in the corner of his eyes.

"Girls, maybe you two should go play outside." I said, approaching Sabrina, but before I could get any closer, Tommy scooted in between us and put his hands up defensively.

"You're not touching my girlfriend Nell." Tommy hissed in a loud whisper.

"She's my sister Tommy." I said, trying to scoot Tommy out of the way, but he proceeded to kick me in the stomach.

"Oh yeah, then why did you hurt her bottom?" Tommy asked.

My jaw dropped.

"Sabrina Marie, I can't believe you told Tommy about me spanking you." I said.

"You spanked Sabrina? When?" Peter asked.

"At the preschool place. She tooked me into the bathroom, gave me a long talk about lying, and then she gave me a spanking as a punishment. It still hurt when I went to wake up Tommy from his nap, worried about how he was doing, so I told him, and now he's mad at Nell." Sabrina explained, starting to cry.

I felt just awful about everything. Ashamed, guilty and embarrassed, not to mention, pretty angry at Sabrina. I mean, she needed to be punished for what she caused, and it was all I could think of at the moment. I put a comforting hand on to her shoulder and knelt down to her level.

"Sabrina, I don't like to spank you, but sometimes, you need to be taught a lesson, and I was so angry at how you lied to me this morning, and that you put Tommy in danger, that I had to do something. I'm terribly sorry, and I understand if you and Tommy don't wish to speak to me for the rest of the day." I said.

"It's okay Nell, I forgive you, and I'm sorry about sneaking Tommy out of the house and lying." Sabrina said between her sobs, as we gave one another a hug.

"Apology accepted. Now, why don't you, Madeline and Dil go play outside for a little while and get some fresh air." I said, leading the three kids into the backyard.

Sadly, poor sick Tommy had to remain inside, as Peter had him have a small bowl of some fruit salad and his next dose of antibiotic, and we watched out the window to see by how my sisters were galloping through the grass, they were pretending to be horses, or possibly ponies from that My Little Pony show that they like to watch on TV.

"They're playing cowboys and I can't play outside." I heard Tommy whisper to himself, as he sat on the floor of his playpen area, staring out the large sliding glass door windows into the backyard, a sad expression on his face.

"Don't worry Tommy, when you don't have a fever anymore, you can play outside again too. Plus, you did get to play outside at school today, thanks to Sabrina." I said, heading back into the kitchen, as Peter wanted to have a word with me.

"Did you hear what Tommy said about Reptar to his brother and your sisters?" Peter asked me.

"Yeah, he said Reptar is dead. I wonder where he got that idea." I said.

"I think I know." Peter said, pulling out his iPhone and bringing up Youtube, where he did some scrolling.

He then clicked on a video that appeared to be a newscast.

"And in entertainment news, Leo, well-known for playing Reptar, is dead." A girl reporter said on the screen, as footage of Reptar from one of the Reptar on Ice shows was shown.

Peter then paused the video and glanced over at me.

"I did a bit more research on this topic, and Leo was killed in a car accident on Valentine's Day." Peter said.

It then hit me.

"Tommy must have heard this report on the news after that nature show he was watching ended." I said.

"And he obviously heard the words, Reptar is dead, and being a very gullable three-year-old with a big imagination, he believed this to be true. Plus it didn't help that the series disappeared off of Hulu yesterday, even though it's been scheduled since early January to disappear, he's three, he can't read those messages." Peter said.

"So how are we going to convince him that Reptar isn't really dead? Or is he?" I asked.

"Well I was looking at Reptar's official website, and they are looking into a replacement, as it stated that the Reptar on Ice show would be continuing to tour the Eastern United States and Canada beginning in late March, early April." Peter said.

"But he's three, an age where most kids believe characters like that to exist." I said.

"Yeah, I mean, we're talking about Tommy here, the boy who actually thinks the weather man on television controls the weather and tried to write him a letter one time, asking him to make it snow." Peter said.

"Come again?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well it happened the August before Dil was born. Grandpa Lou, Stu's father, decided to set up the Christmas tree so the family could take their holiday photo for their annual Christmas card, and naturally, being toddlers with no concept of space and time, Tommy, along with his friends, Chuckie, Phil and Lil, who were all over playing that day, thought it was Christmas. However, there were no presents, so they figured that Santa didn't realize it was Christmas, so they were trying to think of ways to remind him. That's when they came up with the idea to make it snow. I forget why Stu was watching the weather channel that day, but they saw the weather man on the TV and, well, that's when Tommy was led to write him a letter to make it snow, as he believes the weather man actually controls the weather." Peter explained.

"And now that he's heard on the TV that he seems to believe Reptar has died, no wonder he's been upset." I said.

"Yeah, and it's not going to be easy for us to convince him otherwise that he's not dying after all, seeing he heard this announcement on television, and he believes what he hears on TV to be the truth." Peter said.

I was all out of ideas at this point, so we decided to let the matter drop, and not mention the six letter r name of that green dinosaur around Tommy again until we had come up with a plan to cheer him up and convince him otherwise.

The rest of the day was more or less, uneventful, as Peter and I made lasagna and a garden salad for dinner, and we all ate together at the kitchen table, after Sabrina, Madeline and Dil came inside from playing outside and got all cleaned up, and while dinner went relatively smoothly, Tommy continued to give me the silent treatment the rest of that day. I was only hoping by the next morning, he would have forgotten about me hitting Sabrina, even though Tommy's parents don't believe in spanking, so he'll probably never understand why I would punish a child by hitting them hard on their bottom, and I found out from Dil during dinner that Tommy had wet the bed at nap time, and Madeline was calling him a baby, putting him in one of his clean diapers, which explained why Tommy had a diaper on when I came into the living room earlier to stop all of the chaos, again, having to have a talk with Madeline that Tommy is no different from any other kid, and he's still quite young, not to mention, not feeling well, so he's liable to wet the bed more right now with being sick. I had her apologize to him, but by the way Tommy was crossing his arms, I'm not sure if he forgave her. After all, they haven't exactly been getting along all week, and I only hoped I could also find a way for everybody to make peace with one another before Sabrina, Madeline and I headed back to Enchancia on either Saturday night or Sunday morning, depending on how late Mr. and Mrs. Pickles returned from their trip.

After dinner, I had Peter see to getting Tommy and Dil to bed, while I got my sisters ready for bed, reading them their story, which they chose Beauty and the Beast, and tucking them in, and for once, we would be getting to bed more or less, at our usual times tonight for a change. I only hoped that tonight, all of us would sleep through the night, and that we could get through Friday, and the last day of school for the week, without any major issues.

End of Nell POV

And with those final words for her entry for Thursday, she closed her notebook, put it away in its special place in her bag, crawled into bed at shortly half past nine at night, and drifted off to sleep.

And this, ends chapter 6. What will happen the next day? Find out next time.

Author's Note: I made a reference to the season 4 Rugrats episode, Let it Snow, which, I must say, The Splat has sadly, ruined that episode by only showing it at Christmas time, not showing it all year round, which I feel ruins the overall joke of the episode, since it technically wasn't Christmas time during the episode to begin with, but whatever. Also, the idea for everybody to have lasagna for dinner was given to me by Sofia2017Planning. Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and here's hoping I have more chapters up, sometime soon.


	7. Friday, A Day of Injuries

Author's Note: And now for my entry for March 10, 2017. Yes, despite it being a quarter after nine at night, I'm going to try really hard, to plunk out the next chapter of my current newest ongoing project before midnight hits for me in my timezone. Before we begin though, one of the ideas for one of the subplots in this chapter was inspired by DemonAloisTrancy, also, DemonAloisTrancy owns the OC's of Savanna and Samaya Green and their parents, Ebany and Allan, and I can't remember if she's created OC's to represent any of their distant relatives, as their maternal grandmother is going to show up in this chapter towards the end, so while I came up with the idea for her to show up, not sure who to give credit to in terms of this particular OC, if it's figured out by the time chapter 8 becomes available, I'll let you guys know at that time who owns her. Anyway, with that out of the way, on with the next chapter of this story!

Chapter 7, Friday, A Day of Injuries

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

I can't believe I'm still coherent enough to plunk out an entry at the ungodly hour of three in the morning on a Saturday, but I was finally able to get Sabrina to go to sleep once she saw that Peter had returned with Tommy from the hospital, and she saw he was okay. Alright, so let me back up a bit to yesterday because this opening statement to anybody reading over my journal for the week is only going to confuse the reader. The day started off, beautiful and sunny, as we all got up, had a lovely breakfast prepared by Peter of some French toast and woffles, and I saw to getting my sisters ready for what would be a half day of school, because of teacher in services in the afternoon. As for Tommy and Dil, well, Dil was only two, so he hadn't started going to school yet, and to everyone's surprise, Tommy was able to speak higher than a whisper, but he still sounded very croaky, and while his fever had come down a great deal from the day before, it was still 99 something, and Peter explained to me that when he went over to preschool the day before to return Chuckie's backpack, because they've known him quite well, they felt better telling him of this, apparently with all of the Flu bugs going around, and things spreading faster in preschools with this particular age group not always being as conscious about hand washing, etc. they ask that if a child has been sick, that he or she be fever free for four days before returning to school.

"And how do they know you so well?" I asked.

"Last year when Tommy's cousin Angelica and her friend Susie Carmichael were in Miss Weamer's class, I use to go volunteer at the school on special helper day, and I continue to do that now that Tommy is in her class. Though a lot of times, I did it for Angelica because very often, her parents were too busy with work to take off on their day of being extra helper." Peter explained.

"Ah, I see. So, I'll see to getting my sisters off to school and going to pick them up come lunch time while you stay here with Tommy and Dil?" I asked.

"Yep that is the plan." Peter said, taking another bite of the woffle on his plate.

And so, that's how it went. I got my sisters off to school and seeing there were only a couple of hours before I had to go pick them back up, and I still had plenty of money leftover because of not using as many cabs as I'd normally use in a week's time, due to Peter helping out with transportation on some of the days, and borrowing his limo the previous day, I took the time to spend sometime out of the house, to go run some errands. Peter did provide me with another grocery list that he had written up, along with a list that Mr. and Mrs. Pickles had texted to him of things they wanted to have restocked when they returned from their trip, which I couldn't believe that they'd be returning tomorrow evening.

So I went to the supermarket, picked up everything on both lists, ran it home to the Pickles, where I asked Peter to put the groceries away, since I needed to more or less, turn around and go pick up my sisters from school, since it was a half day. Upon picking them up, they were really excited because their teachers had announced that a week from today, that being, next Friday, would be Pajama Day at school, where they'd get to wear their pajamas to school and play some really fun games. They were even going to get to watch a movie, which would be voted on by the entire class. Sabrina was hoping her class would vote for Frozen, while Madeline was hoping her class would vote for Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid.

"Oh I'm sure whatever movie gets voted on you girls will enjoy." I said.

We finally made it back to the Pickles house for good, where we all sat down and had lunch together, consisting of Finding Dory macaroni and cheese, fruit salad, and beverages of everybody's choice. Tommy wanted to go outside and play after lunch, to which Peter and I had to sadly remind him that he still had a fever, and didn't go to school, so therefore, playing outside was out.

"But that's not fair!" Tommy screamed, banging his fist on the table in anger, nearly sloshing his apple juice.

"Now come on Tommy, time for your next dose of medicine." Peter said, getting his lunch time dose of his antibiotic ready.

"I don't wanna take this yucky medicine no more. I can talk again and my throat and ears aren't hurting as much anymore." Tommy protested.

"And it's because you've been taking your medicine that you're better, but you're not fully there yet. You still have another week to go of the medicine before it's all gone." Peter said.

I could tell that poor Tommy wasn't pleased by any means to hear this news, and it made me think of the times when I've gone through this with Sabrina and Madeline over the course of taking an antibiotic. They think the minute they're feeling better, they don't need to take the medicine anymore, not understanding that they have to take it for a certain number of days, and being completely better means no fever at all, not just, less of the other physical symptoms of the illness. No matter, because I could tell that Sabrina and Madeline were still pretty hyped up with energy, I sent them and Dil outside to play, while Peter got Tommy to take his meds, and put on a Dummi Bears video for him in the living room, while we saw to cleaning up from lunch.

Who knew that are master of sneakiness would pull something again today while we weren't looking. We heard some noise in the living room, but didn't think much of it, as we cleaned up from lunch and Peter and I decided to sit down at the kitchen table and work on a crossword puzzle together, to see how many of the words we could unscramble without calling the crossword puzzle helpline, as while two dollars a minute was nothing to us folks of royalty, Peter didn't wish to use up minutes on his iPhone, and I knew if we called that line from the Pickles land phone, those two dollars a minute would be billed to them on their next phone bill, which might not make them very happy to see that on the next bill when it came, especially when they figured out we were the ones to charge their phone bill, and so far, other than buying groceries and having to take Tommy to the doctor's, which thanks to Insurance, we wouldn't have to worry about that medical bill, we didn't have to worry about utilities anyway. And Peter had already made arrangements to pay for that fridge repair from earlier in the week, so there was nothing to worry about there. However, while we were engrossed in our crossword puzzle activity, we heard the wind pick up outside, it started raining, and I heard Dil and Madeline come running into the kitchen from the backyard in a panic.

"Nell! Peter! Come quick! Tommy and Sabrina are losted!" Madeline cried, tugging at the sleeve of my dress.

I glanced up from my crossword puzzle in shock, but also very worried.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Tommy snuck outside to play in the sandbox from the living room, and brought out his favorite glider plane for us to play with." Dil started telling me and Peter.

"And then, Sabrina got all mad at me cuz I accidentally threw it over the fence into the next yard. That's when it got really windy and started to rain, getting me all wet. Feeling ascared, me and Dil ran inside, but Sabrina and Tommy went off into the yard behind the house to get the plane back." Madeline continued to explain.

At that moment, Peter and I looked towards the window to see that not only was it rainy and windy out, but it was foggy too, making it nearly impossible to see anything.

"Oh my gosh! And now, it's foggy too! I bet Sabrina and Tommy are not only lost, but they can't see to find their way home! I just hope they're not hurt or anything." I said in a panic, about ready to have a nervous breakdown.

"Let me just call my limo driver to bring me something." Peter said, getting his iPhone out of his gray Confederacy uniform and making a call.

Once the person on the opposite end of the phone picked up, he had this to say.

"Yeah, Arnie, could you please bring me my Reptar costume in the royal costume supply closet?" Peter said into the phone.

"My little sister and Tommy are in trouble, and you want to dress up as that dinosaur on TV? It's not even Halloween!" I shreaked loudly, forgetting Peter was on the phone.

"Quiet!" Peter snapped at me, before returning to his phone call to work out some final details with his driver to bring him what he needed.

I just let out a sigh, as I went and found me an umbrella, just in case I was needed for anything. At least by this time, everybody had more or less, forgotten about yesterday's spanking incident with Sabrina, so as long as Mr. and Mrs. Pickles didn't find out, we could more or less, put that behind us and move on, with the rest of our lives.

A short while later, Peter's limo driver showed up with his Reptar costume, and he went and got changed. He returned wearing the costume, along with a jetpack on his back and carrying his sword.

"I am Reptar, hear me roar!" Peter said in a deep gruff voice, trying to disguise himself.

"And thanks to Erebus, which Peter let me borrow, I'm ready to go." Peter in that gruff voice pretending to be Reptar continued.

"Thank you Reptar, please, bring back my little sister safely." I said, just as Peter dressed as Reptar escaped out the double glass doors in the kitchen on his rescue mission, and I saw to keeping Madeline and Dil entertained until he returned.

Luckily, while it was still raining, the fog had lifted so Peter, I mean, Reptar, could see where he was going. Madeline wanted to watch Frozen, so I put on the movie for her, much to Dil's dismay, who wanted the Curious George movie, Return to the Jungle, but regardless, the two kids fell asleep on the couch watching the movie, just as I heard some little feet run through the kitchen door into the house. Curious, I went to see who it was, and I was so relieved to see that my sister Sabrina was safely inside. However, she was soaking wet, had several cuts and bruises on her hands, arms and legs, and along with her soaking wet clothes, they fit very snug on her body, I could swear she was wearing the black shorts and red National Stadium t-shirt that Tommy was previously dressed in.

"What happened? Are you all right?" I asked, looking around to get some bandages and antibiotic cream to get her wounds patched up.

"I'm wet, and gots lots of booboos, but Tommy offered me his clothes. Madeline accidentally threw his plane into the next yard, and got really scared, running inside. I tried to stop Tommy from going to rescue the plane, as he wasn't spose to be outside, and he was starting to cough more and getting really cold, but he didn't care. He insisted on going, so I went with him. When we got into the nextest yard though, we couldn't see nothing, and my dress was soaking wet, so Tommy offered me his clothes to help me stay dry. I tried to talk him out of it, as he'd only get really wet and cold, but again, he insisted on keeping me as warm and dry as possible. I have the sweetest boyfriend ever." Sabrina explained, blushing at this point.

"So what happened next?" I asked, looking over her wounds as she continued to tell me the story.

"Not being able to see, we split up, trying to find our way back home, only I swear I heard Tommy fall somewhere, and he screamed ow, but I couldn't find him. Then Reptar came, the fog lifted, and I could see to get home. Reptar toldid me he'd see to rescuing Tommy and the airplane from this yard, which wasn't even a yard. It was a bunch of grass and wood and it looked like Tommy might have fallen into a whole, but it was hard to tell with what little I saw, as Reptar was somewhat blocking my view, as he escorted me back towards the gap in the fence that would lead me back into the backyard. I did just that, and here I am." Sabrina said.

"So how did you get a bunch of booboos then?" I asked.

"Trying to feel my way around when I couldn't see, and poking myself on several rocks and pieces of wood, as well as a couple of trees." Sabrina said.

"Well not to worry, let's first, get you out of those wet clothes and into some dry ones, and then, I'm going to see to patching up your wounds." I said, as we went upstairs and did just that, then went into the bathroom, where I saw to applying antibiotic cream and Reptar bandages, because that's all I could find on hand to her various cuts and bruises.

"Ow! That stings!" Sabrina cried.

"I'm sorry it hurts, but the stingy stuff will keep your cuts nice and clean." I said.

Luckily my sister calmed down a little, as I saw to patching up her wounds along with the Reptar bandages, only for her to start crying.

"No! Not Reptar! Tommy won't be able to stand to look at me if I'm covered in Reptar stickies." Sabrina cried.

"I hope that won't be the case sweetie, but we have to keep your cuts clean." I said, applying the last bandage to the last cut I could find on her leg.

"There, all patched up. Now, let's go see if your sister and Dil are awake from their nap yet. I should be mad at you for sneaking off, but you were only doing it to help Tommy get his toy back, so I can't be too upset with you. After all, you've hardly gotten to spend much time with Tommy this week with him being so sick and all, that I don't blame you for doing what you did." I said, leading my sister back downstairs, where from the sound of it, Peter was in the downstairs bathroom getting changed, and Tommy was in the living room on the couch.

I also found that Madeline and Dil were no longer asleep, playing on the floor, Madeline was coloring in a coloring book, while Dil was playing with some toy cars and trucks. Sabrina ran over to Tommy, who was wrapped in a towel and trying to get warm, just as Peter emerged from the bathroom along with his limo driver who was carrying a huge duffle bag, which I'm assuming had the Reptar costume in it. We then went into the living room, where we heard Tommy telling his story of his rescue to Sabrina.

"Reptar saved me! He had Peter's sword Erebus, which he used to cut the rope after he rescued me. Then, he tied me to the rope, where he had me reach out and grab my plane from where it fell." Tommy explained, holding up his toy plane, which was yellow with a blue stripe going down the middle, red wings, and it had a face on it, an eye on either side of the stripe.

"I'm glad I've gots my zippo glider plane back. That's the second time I've losted it." Tommy said.

"Where did you lose it the firstest time Tommy?" Dil asked.

"A long time ago, it went downstairs into daddy's workshop. Me and Chuckie had to rescue it, and it was the firstest time we climbed down stairs by ourselves." Tommy explained.

"So Reptar's not dead then?" Peter asked, upon entering the living room.

"Nope, and I'm glad about that." Tommy said with a smile.

"Good, cuz I had to get covered in Reptar stickies and was really worried you'd never wanna look at me again." Sabrina said.

"And now, to check you over Tommy." I said, just as Peter stepped in my way.

"I'll be checking over him, as while Reptar managed to find him a towel, that's all he did before he had to disappear to whatever next heroic duty he'd have to perform." Peter said, never once, revealing who was really Reptar in the first place.

I decided not to question him about the whole ordeal, as I knew why he did it. This was his way to get Tommy cheered up over thinking Reptar had died, and apparently, his plan worked.

"So Reptar's not dead?" Madeline asked, looking up from her coloring book.

"Nope, the TV was wrong." Tommy replied, just as Peter scooped him up in his arms and carried him upstairs to give him his patching up wounds treatment.

No sooner had they headed upstairs, when I heard the rain let up and the doorbell ring. I went to answer it to see three African American people who I didn't recognize.

"I am Helen O'Mally, may I help you?" I asked.

"Oh, hi there, yeah, Peter said you were helping him this week with watching Stu and Didi's boys. My name is Ebany Green, I live across the street, and these are my daughters, two-year-old Savanna and one-year-old Samaya, and I need a huge favor." Ebany said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Think you could watch my daughters this afternoon and evening? Their father is in the hospital. We think he might have Gout, based on what they've been discovering with the infection in his toe, and they're debating if we're going to need to do extensive surgery. He asked if I could come, to which I agreed to, but I didn't feel it would be appropriate to be taking the girls, especially if they decide to do surgery tonight." Ebany explained to me.

"It's no problem, though I should warn you, Tommy has been sick." I said.

"Oh I know, learned of this fact from Peter the other day when we ran into him and Dil at the park, and again at his annual Valentine's Day party. That's when I knew you were taking care of him. Though while I had all intensions on leaving them with the Finsters or DeVilles, nobody was home when I called, leaving you guys as a last resort." Ebany said.

"No worries, I don't believe Tommy is contagious anymore now that he's been on the antibiotics for a few days, but I'll make sure to keep him quarenteened upstairs, away from your daughters, especially since I'm sure you're trying to keep your house, sickness free as much as possible, seeing the state of your husband as of late." I said.

"Exactly. If I must spend the night with my husband, my mother has agreed to stop by here later on after she gets off of work at the diner where she works, I've already made sure to give her the address, but I'll let her know who might be answering the door when she comes, so she's not alarmed, as she doesn't know any of you guys, seeing she moved here just a couple of months ago when she found out my husband was diagnosed with this, Gout condition." Ebany said.

"All right, anything I should know about Savanna or Samaya, like allergy wise or anything like that?" I asked.

"Nope, they aren't allergic to anything, and seeing it's Friday night, I usually let them stay up a little bit later anyway, so if they're up past their bedtime, I'm not too worried." Ebany said.

"Okay, sounds good. Good luck to you and your husband, I'll be keeping him in my thoughts and prayers, and we'll see you or your mother later." I said, seeing Ebany out the door and going off to the living room to check on the kids, who were all sitting in a circle on the floor, rolling their favorite ball to one another and having a very interesting conversation.

By the time I got there, it had appeared that Dil had introduced Savanna and Samaya to my sisters, Sabrina and Madeline, and thankfully, Peter and Tommy hadn't returned downstairs yet.

"We're here cuz my daddy had to go to the hopcickle, on account my mommy says he's gots goat." Savanna explained.

"Goat?" Sabrina, Madeline and Dil all asked in unison, looking confused.

"Like the animal on famrs with horns?" Madeline asked.

"Yeah, and now one of them's in my daddy's toe, making it hurt!" Samaya cried.

"Wait a sec, I thought goats were biggerer than us, or at least, too big to fit inside somebody's leg or foot." Sabrina said.

"Well my daddy likes to eat goat cheese." Savanna said.

"That must be it! Goat cheese gotted into your daddy and hurted his foot." Dil said.

"I thought food went into our tummy." Madeline said, grabbing the ball as it came towards her, before rolling it to another person in the circle.

"Well, when we go out to eat, daddy usually clears his plate, and mommy always says he has a hollow leg." Savanna said.

"Uh oh. Your daddy ated too much goat cheese, that it wouldn't all fit in his tummy, making it go into his leg, and down into his foot and toe, but maybe his toe is allergic, giving it a inflection, and that's why he's in the hopcickle." Madeline suggested.

"Uh oh, that must be it! Poor daddy!" Samaya said.

"Yeah, poor daddy." Savanna said, grabbing the ball, as the two little girls started to cry, Sabrina, Madeline and Dil all joining in with them.

I couldn't help sitting on the couch at this point, trying to stifle my laughter, as I heard them getting all confused by everything they were saying. Then, I came up with something to tell our guests, Dil, and my sisters.

"Kids, it's not goat, it's Gout, and the term, having a hollow leg is an expression used for somebody who can eat a lot without gaining weight or feeling too full right away. People think they have a hollow leg because their stomach has gotten really full, but in actuality, it never enters into their leg like what you guys might be thinking." I explained.

However, I think my explanation only went clear over their heads, as I'd find out later on that evening when the Green girls headed for home. Just then though, I heard Peter coming down the stairs with Tommy. They were just about to walk into the living room, when I quickly got up from the couch and saw to stopping them.

"So what are we gonna do tonight?" Savanna asked.

"Usually Nell let's us watch a movie on Friday nights." Sabrina said.

"And Nell promised me my Curious George movie, Curious George Returns to the Jungle, where he gets to be a astronaut." Dil said.

"Wait a sec, don't astronauts go to outside space?" Samaya asked.

"Yep they do, but George goes to both, outside space and the African jungle to fix some satellite communicator." Dil explained, running over to the bookshelf of DVD's and pulling it off of the shelf, just as I saw to approaching Peter and Tommy, who was now patched up in bandages, similarly to Sabrina.

"Wow! Savanna and Samaya came to play! Hi!" Tommy greeted, sounding a bit croaky and letting out a tiny cough.

"And for this reason you'll have to stay upstairs." I said.

"But I wanna watch the movie too, and tell them how Reptar rescued me when I went to find my lost glider plane." Tommy said.

"Maybe you can watch the movie later when you're all better. Besides, thanks to your little adventure in the now vacant lot behind your house that use to be the yard belonging to Rosie's grandmother, thanks to you falling into the whole where her house once sat, clear down to what use to be her basement, you skipped your nap today, so it wouldn't hurt for you to get to bed early tonight." Peter said.

He then instructed for me to go fix Tommy some warm soup and bring it in a thirmas with a spoon upstairs so he could eat in bed, which Peter would feed him, while I also looked into something simple to feed the rest of our party. I then decided on doing something I rarely do after putting on some chicken noodle soup to heat, and that was, ordering pizza delivery. I decided to make things simple, I'd order us a large pepperoni pizza, which I knew I, Sabrina and Madeline would eat, and thankfully, Peter and Dil were okay with that too. Tommy was not happy about being stuck in his room, but he sadly, had no choice in the matter, as Peter saw to feeding him his dinner in bed and doing his bedtime routine early, while I saw to ordering the pizza, and waiting for it to be delivered, while the other kids played with toys in the living room.

"So, with it being dinner and a movie night, what are we gonna watch?" I asked.

"Curious George Returns to the Jungle!" All of the kids cheered in unison, as Dil handed me the DVD of the movie.

"Very well then, we'll put it on when the pizza arrives.

Before we all knew it, the pizza had arrived, and Peter and I got the kids' dinners dished up and juice poured into sippy cups. I gave Samaya her pizza though, and she had this to say to me, seeing that based on my talk with the kids from earlier, they had all figured out I could understand them all, and they obviously knew that Peter could talk to them, no matter what their age was.

"Uh, there's no goat cheese on this pizza is there? I don't wanna get Goat and end up in the hopcickle with a inflection in my foot like daddy." Samaya said.

"I told you Samaya, it's Gout, not Goat, and no worries, it's not goat cheese on the pizza. I believe its monsarella cheese, but I'm not entirely sure what the Piggy's Pizza Palace uses on their pizza, I just know it isn't goat cheese." I said, cutting her piece of pizza into tinier pieces so she could eat it more easily, seeing she only had a couple of teeth, and she was the youngest out of everybody there.

"Well, an unhappy Tommy is upstairs in his room playing. I got him to eat his soup and take his meds, and got him into some pajamas, but he wasn't ready to go to sleep. So I told him as long as he stayed upstairs and played, I was okay with it. Though knowing Tommy, we'll see how long that lasts." Peter said, taking a seat in one of the easy chairs with his plate of pizza purched on one knee, and his glass of water on the end table next to him.

I went over and put on the DVD of the movie, and once the movie was playing, got myself some pizza, and we all saw to eating while we watched the movie. Little did I know that King of the Sneaks, as I feel I can clearly dub Tommy with that title now, would find a clever way to watch the movie without us knowing about it, only once again, getting himself into his second trap of the night. We at least got to finish the movie before it all happened, when Madeline, feeling tired, decided to head on up to bed, when she nearly tripped on Tommy on the stairs.

"Get out of my way Sabrina's babyish boyfriend." Madeline snapped.

"I can't, I'm stuck, and don't call me a baby Madeline." Tommy snapped.

Madeline just started laughing at him, when I came out into the entry hallway to see what was going on. Sure enough, Tommy had a pair of bynoculars in his hands, and his head was stuck between two of the banister rungs. I wanted to scream at that point, but I knew that wouldn't help in this situation, so I did the next best thing.

"Peter! Could you come here please?" I asked.

Peter came running.

"What is it Helen?" Peter asked.

"Peter, our king of sneaks decided he didn't like being trapped in his room, so wanting to watch the movie with a pair of bynoculars he found, not sure where, since I don't recognize them." I started to explain before Tommy interrupted me.

"I founded them in mommy and daddy's room." Tommy said.

"Well you will be putting them back as soon as we get your head unstuck from the banister." I said.

"So let me get this straight. You didn't want to be trapped in your room, so you went and got your head trapped in the banister instead." Peter said.

"I didn't mean to, I was trying to get a closer view of the movie without getting caught, and when I tried to move my head back when it ended, I couldn't." Tommy said.

"So why didn't you call one of us for help?" I asked.

"I was about to when Madeline founded me." Tommy said.

"Okay Tommy, relax, I'm going to head downstairs to your dad's workshop and find the tools we need to undo the bars so we can get your head out." Peter said.

"Why not use Erebus and cut one of the bars off." Tommy suggested.

"That's a great idea Tommy, but I don't wish to break your parents staircase. Now, everybody else, please, stay up here." Peter instructed.

"You sure you don't need my help?" I asked.

"I would just assume nobody else go downstairs into Stu's workshop other than myself. I'm an inventor as well as a king, and I've helped him fix up several of his inventions, so if I should start up something crazy down there, or break something, I know how to fix it, plus, I know right where his tools are, this will only take a minute." Peter said, opening the basement door and heading downstairs to look for the tools, while I saw to getting Madeline upstairs around Tommy so she could start getting herself ready for bed.

I then went into the living room where I kept Savanna, Samaya, Dil and Sabrina busy with a game of the Reptar matching game until Peter returned to the entry hall to finish the job of rescuing Tommy.

When I heard the basement door close behind him and saw that Samaya had more fun trying to stick the cards into her diaper instead of trying to play the game for real, matching up the pictures of the characters to one another, I decided to go see what Peter was doing to rescue Tommy. Not sure what tool he was using, but he found one to help him loosen one of the rungs of the banister on one side of Tommy's head, removing it from the stairs, making the space wider so Tommy could get his head out. I must say, he's one brave little three-year-old to stay so calm through all of this, but a short while later, Peter had the bar undone, and Tommy was able to pull his head out.

"I'm free! Thanks for saving me Peter. You're as good at rescuing babies as Reptar." Tommy said.

"You're welcome Tommy, but please, promise me you'll never stick your head through the railing again. That was a very dangerous thing to do, and you're lucky you didn't get hurt." Peter said.

"I promised, besides, it did feel pretty uncomfortable for a while." Tommy said, heading upstairs, which, by the way I could see his hands down towards his crotch, he had to go potty really badly by this point.

He had dropped the bynoculars on the floor, which I picked up and put around my neck, figuring I'd go put them up later when I headed off to bed, assuming I figured out where they went in his parents bedroom, seeing I was sleeping there for the week.

However, at that very moment, several things happened at once. The doorbell rang, just as we all heard a loud scream from Tommy from upstairs.

"I'll go see about Tommy, you go answer the door." Peter said, as he finished getting the rung of the banister put back into place just in time, before rushing upstairs to see if Tommy was okay, while I saw to answering the door.

I answered the door to find standing there, an elderly lady who looked to also be African American like Savanna and Samaya.

"I am here to collect my granddaughters, Savanna and Samaya. Their mother is having to stay overnight at the hospital with their father, who sadly, had to undergo emergency surgery to have his left leg amputated." The elderly lady said.

"Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that." I said.

"Me too, but did the girls have a good time?" Their grandmother asked.

"They sure did, we had pepperoni pizza for dinner and watched a Curious George movie." I said, leading her into the living room where Savanna was trying to put together a Dummi Bears puzzle, and Samaya was snuggling up with a couple of teddy bears, looking about ready to fall asleep.

"Grandma's here to take you home." She said, pulling out a double stroller she had brought with her and seeing to strapping her granddaughters into the stroller.

"What does amputation mean?" Savanna asked me, as I saw to helping their grandmother get her granddaughters situated.

"It means your daddy had to have his leg cut off." I said.

I saw the worried look of disappointment and shock on her and her sister's faces upon my saying this, but I didn't wish to lie to them, seeing they'd probably see their father eventually, and notice something different about him right away.

"Oh no! Daddy's hollow leg is gone! That means, if he eats too much, he's going to throw it all up through a whole where his leg use to be, just like there's a whole on my favoritest Dora the Explorer doll where her leg went missing. Now there's a whole in daddy too!" Samaya cried.

"You mean my Dora dolly, which was a hand-me-down to you." Savanna said.

"Uh huh." Samaya said through her tears, just as Peter came downstairs with Tommy, who was clutching on to his crotch in pain.

"Poor daddy, he's without his leg." Savanna said.

"And it's all thanks to eating goat cheese. I'm not never eating goat cheese never again." Samaya protested.

"Me neither!" Savanna cried.

"Their daddy's leg came off? Uh oh, I member Angelica telling me about this one time. It's called tangerine, where it turns orange before it falls off." Tommy said, sounding like he was in a great deal of pain.

"Oh no! Now we can't eat tangerines neither! And those are my favorite fruit too!" Samaya cried, bursting into tears at this point.

I wasn't sure what Tommy was referring to, and by this time, their grandmother was taking them out the door and heading across the street with them when this comment was made, so couldn't help them any further. I just hoped their father was going to be okay, and hopefully, he'd be able to get a procetic leg. At that moment though, I needed to be more concerned about Tommy.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Tommy was using the toilet upstairs, and he didn't move enough out of the way when putting down the seat and closing the lid, and, well, he slammed the seat down hard on, well, you know, that part that makes us guys different from you ladies." Peter explained.

"Oh dear! Is he all right?" I asked.

"Ow! It really hurts!" Tommy cried.

"I'm sure he's fine, but it did look badly hurt, so just to play it safe, I'm taking him to the emergency room to get him checked out, just to be double sure, as while I've had some medical training, seeing I did fight for the Confederacy's independence, and having medical training was part of my training, I'm not skilled in the area of mending broken bones, nor do I have an X-ray machine on me to check on these things myself, so better double check with the experts to be sure he's okay. Think you can get Dil and your sisters to bed?" Peter asked.

"I have everything under control, and Tommy, I hope you feel better." I said, seeing Peter and Tommy out the door, when an ambulance pulled up to rush them off to the hospital.

However, while I got upstairs to find that Madeline had put on her pajamas and fallen asleep in her bed for the week, Sabrina and Dil were too worried about Tommy to sleep, so we spent the next few hours, keeping ourselves busy until Peter returned.

We played with puzzles, watched some episodes of the Dummi Bears on DVD, and at a point in there, Dil fell asleep, who I carried upstairs and got him tucked into his bed. At about half past two in the morning, Peter returned with a sleeping Tommy in his arms. Sabrina ran excitedly to greet them, then stopped dead when she saw that Tommy was asleep. Luckily I was right behind her, so I could ask Peter how it all went.

"So what happened?" I whispered.

"Not to worry, nothing's broken, he just, badly bruised it. They recommended he put ice on it, and they gave him some pain killers, Tylonol, and he more or less, fell asleep on the way home, which I had my limo driver pick us up." Peter whispered to me, as he saw to carrying Tommy up to bed.

"I'm glad he's going to be okay." I said.

"Me too." Sabrina said, nearly collapsing with exhaustion on the stairs.

I carried my worried, exhausted little sister up to bed, where I tucked her in next to her sister, and finally, went to my room to find nearly all of the drawers on Mr. and Mrs. Pickles chest of drawers were partially open, with the top drawer wide open.

Remembering I still had the bynoculars around my neck, I then figured out very quickly where they belonged, and saw that Tommy had put himself in danger by using the drawers as steps to reach the top drawer to get them out. I wasn't too pleased by his sneaky dangerous behavior, but I wouldn't worry about that right then. After all, it was a quarter to three in the morning, I was plumb exhausted, and ready to pass out and go to sleep. So I put the bynoculars up, closed up the drawers in the chest, got ready for bed, and I'm about to go to sleep myself.

However, before I do that, I pray to the lord that I can get through my final day here, without any injuries, because today was enough of a scare for me to last a lifetime. Though I learned that little boys are quite prone to injuries no doubt, and I surely wouldn't forget this anytime soon.

End of Nell POV

And with that, she closed up her notebook, stashed it away in her bag, turned off the lamp on the bed side table, and saw to falling asleep for the final time in Stu and Didi's bed.

And this, ends chapter 7.

Author's Note: I made a reference to the Rugrats episode, Stu-Maker's Elves from season 1, and Tommy's comment about Angelica and tangerine was a reference to the season 5 Rugrats episode, The First Cut. I also recall there was some lost Rugrats episode where Chuckie was going to get his head trapped in the banister, and I recall a kid DJ Tanner was watching in some episode of Full House getting his head stuck in the banister, which helped inspire that bit in the chapter, and the part where Tommy slammed his, well, you know, on the toilet seat, I don't remember all of the details, but I believe my brother did something like that when he was little. I don't think it was broken though, just, very badly bruised, or else I'd probably remember the incident more. But I've heard of little boys doing this at one time or another in their lives, so yeah. Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and I hope to be back with more, very soon.


	8. Saturday, Making Peace

Author's Note: I'm terribly, terribly sorry I haven't been around in pretty much, a week. Between feeling a slight bit of depression over some things I have no control over, over having episodes of fatigue, writer's block, and spending the middle part of last week with my nephew, plus, going to see the new Beauty and the Beast movie on Saturday, which was very good, I sadly, haven't been around much lately. It also hasn't helped that I had other things distracting me over the weekend as well. No matter, I'm back now, and I'm hoping to get all caught up over the course of this next week, so by the end of the month, I'll be more or less, back to where I should be. Without further a due, let's move on, to the second to last chapter of this story, and the final chapter, to be from Nell's point of view.

Chapter 8, Saturday, Making Peace

Nell POV

Dear Journal,

Now that I finally got my younger sister Sabrina calmed down, I can see to writing my last and final entry in you while we're on our trip home.

"Nell, why was Tommy crying?" Sabrina asked again.

I turned to her and put a gentle hand on her left shoulder, seeing she was sitting directly to my right.

"I don't know why he was crying, but we had to leave. I'm sure whatever's the matter, his parents have everything under control. Now, why not try to take your nap while we have this long journey home ahead of us, seeing you'll be too excited to sleep once we get home." I said.

"I'm not sleepy." Sabrina said, letting out a huge yawn, as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

I looked over to my left and saw that my other sister, Madeline, had long since fallen asleep, as I'm guessing she was more or less, tuckered out since we saw to leaving the Pickles residence, and with Peter sitting up front escorting his driver and working the portal key to get us through to Enchancia, I felt it best, to not bother him.

So now that I've managed to calm down my worried little sister, and gotten her to take her nap, I can get back to writing in this thing. Yes, while this is the entry for Saturday, my last full day at the villager's internship, I'm actually writing this entry on Sunday morning, as we see to heading home to the castle in Enchancia. Oh it will be great to sleep in my own bed again, not to mention, I've noticed my throat has felt slightly scratchy this morning. I have a bad feeling I might have come down with what Tommy had over the course of this last week, which doesn't exactly make me happy, but if I'm going to be sick, I'd rather be sick at the castle, where Bianca, Bailywick, and my new parents, King Roland and Queen Miranda can take care of me, and Sofia can help keep my sisters entertained when I'm too sick to do so.

So let's rewind to yesterday, and go from the beginning of my final day at the Pickles, which, I can't say was super eventful, other than learning how the power of imagination, can help mend a friendship, or at least, get two aquaintances who weren't exactly getting along, to finally find a since of friendliness with one another. Because we got to bed after three in the morning, Sabrina and I slept rather late. In fact, what awoke us, was hearing the sound of Peter's voice coming from the bathroom.

"Way to go Dil I'm very proud of you!" Peter cried excitedly.

Curious, I got up, put on my pink robe and slippers, and left Mr. and Mrs. Pickles bedroom to see what was going on.

Upon peering into the door of the bathroom down the hall, I saw Dil sitting on top of a training potty that sat in the corner of the bathroom, with Peter standing nearby.

"Morning Peter and Dil, what's going on here?" I asked.

Peter turned to me with a smile.

"Dil came into the bathroom this morning all by himself, and sat on the potty! I think he mostly went in his diapers, but it's a sure sign that this two-year-old, is ready for potty training! Stu and Didi are going to be so excited when they hear the news that their youngest is ready for this." Peter said.

"Oh wow that's great! Congratulations Dil!" I said, as Dil hopped up off of the potty and giggled.

Peter got him into a fresh diaper, just as my two sisters and Tommy came through the hall, looking like they had just awakened.

"Morning Tommy, how are you doing?" Peter asked.

"Soar, but okay." Tommy replied with a smile.

We all headed downstairs for breakfast, where Peter made each of us a custom made breakfast. Sabrina wanted scrambled eggs and ham, Madeline wanted a fried egg and some bacon, I was more or less, in the mood for a begal and cream cheese, with a fruit salad on the side, while Dil wanted ice cream, but Peter reminded him that's not breakfast food, so he settled for a banana pancake instead, while Tommy wanted a simple bowl of Reptar Cereal. We all had juice to drink, and seeing it was nearly lunch time on a Saturday, meaning our next meal would probably not be until dinner time, while the kids went off into the living room to play, Peter and I saw to getting things ready for what we'd be fixing that evening for dinner.

"Stu and Didi should be home around dinner time, and they asked if they could have chicken squares and roasted vegetables upon their return." Peter said.

"Sounds good to me. Also, depending on when they return, I hope they won't mmind if my sisters and I stay an extra night." I said.

"Oh I'm sure they won't. Of course, you'll have to move in with your sisters for tonight." Peter said, washing up the last of the breakfast dishes.

"I figured that much, but I'm sure my sisters won't mind." I said, wiping down the kitchen table, just as Tommy stomped into the kitchen in an angry rage.

"I can't take it anymore!" Tommy screamed at the top of his lungs.

Peter and I turned towards him to see what was bothering him.

"What's the matter Tommy?" Peter asked, drying his hands on a towel.

"I'm tired of Madeline! I want her to go home! I'm sick of her laughing at me, calling me a baby and telling Sabrina she can't play with me. Me and Madeline gots nothing in common, and I'm all out of ideas of stuff we can all play together." Tommy said.

I let out a sigh. I was really hoping that the final day of our trip, things would manage to calm down, but it didn't look like it, and looked like I'd have to intervene at this point, and try to help the group make peace with one another. I turned to Peter.

"Will you be okay in here while I go take care of the situation in the living room?" I asked.

"Don't worry about me, I need to check in at my castle and take care of some stuff on my phone." Peter said.

I flashed him a smile and followed Tommy into the living room, where I saw puzzle pieces and other toys scattered about the floor, and a pink fuzzy throw blanket I didn't recognize, ripped in half, part of it covering Dil, who was sitting on the couch, trying to watch what looked like the Goober show on TV, or at least, I saw that orange goafer on TV, and Peter told me at one point during the week his name was Goober. I found the remote on the floor mixed in with a collection of toys, turned off the TV, and put the remote on the TV stand where it belonged.

"Hey! I was watching that!" Dil screamed, throwing his piece of blanket on the floor and running up behind me, pulling at my robe.

I turned towards him and knelt down at his level.

"I've got a better idea. First, let's clean up the living room, and after we're done, I've got a better game we can play this afternoon to help everybody calm down and play nice." I said.

"But I don't like cleaning up!" Sabrina wined.

I put my hands on my hips and gave my sister a stirn, serious look.

"Sabrina, you all helped make this mess, therefore, you're all, going to help clean it up." I said.

Just then, I heard Peter call Tommy's name from the kitchen.

"Tommy, time for your next dose of meds." Peter called.

I knew Tommy wasn't interested in taking the meds anymore, as at breakfast, Peter took his temperature to see he no longer had fever, so I had to stop helping Dil and my sisters clean up, to escort him in there to take them. I also found out that Peter briefly awoke him earlier that morning to have him take the morning dose, and had a yogurt cup for him to take the meds with.

"Here Tommy." Peter said, motioning for him to take a seat at the table.

"No! I don't need meds no more." Tommy protested.

"Tommy, you're not quite done with the medicine yet." Peter said.

Tommy did sit down and eat the yogurt, but then, after drinking the medicine, I noticed a funny look on his face, as he got down from the chair at the table, ran over to the garbage can, where he managed to open the lid, and spit out his medicine.

"Tommy! No!" Peter cried, but it was too late.

Tommy had wiped his mouth on a paper towel, threw it away and went back into the living room to play. I looked over at Peter, who was cleaning up some yogurt Tommy had spilled on the table.

"I don't know Helen, Tommy can be quite stubborn at points." Peter said.

"Has he ever done anything like this before?" I asked.

"Not that I can remember, but most of the time I'm usually watching him, he's sick with something that doesn't require taking an antibiotic." Peter said.

I decided at this point to go back into the living room, which, to my pleasant surprise, was all clean. Finding Tommy's green ball with the blue stripe and orange star on the floor, I picked it up and held it high in the air.

"Okay kids, gather in a circle around me on the floor." I said, as everybody did what I said.

"Now, I have a really fun game for us to play. The object of the game is to get everybody to use their imaginations. After a while, you'll see, we all have more in common than you think, and this will hopefully, get everybody to get along and play nice." I said.

"Sounds like fun!" Sabrina and Madeline cried in unison.

"Yeah!" Dil added.

Tommy, however, didn't look convinced.

"I don't know, me and Madeline are just, too different." Tommy said.

"Come on Tommy, you never know unless you try." I said, bouncing the ball up into the air and catching it.

He let out a sigh.

"Oh, okay then, I suppose I can try." Tommy muttered, letting out a small smile, as he sat down on the carpet, the rest of us, doing the same in our circle.

"That's the spirit. Now, whoever has the ball, gets to imagine the ball is something, and all of us, will follow along, and play that imaginary scene. We'll play out each scene for roughly five minutes. Afterwards, that person will roll the ball to someone else in the circle, and we'll keep going, until everybody's had a turn." I explained, rolling the ball to Madeline.

She caught the ball, looked up at the group and smiled.

"It's a giant snowball! And we're in a winter wonder land!" Madeline cried, making circles with her hands on the ball like she were making a snowball.

We had fun for the next five minutes, throwing imaginary snowballs at one another, building pretend snowmen, and to end our snow play, we lay down and made snow angels. It felt kind of funny doing the snow angel motions against the living room carpet, but when you close your eyes and imagine you're in a field full of freshly fallen snow, with everybody wearing warm snowsuits, mine being dark purple with white fur around the edges, it's not so bad. After doing this for a few minutes, we got back into our circle, and Madeline rolled the ball to Tommy.

"This ball is a big pile of leaves, like the ones you find in fall after they've falled off the trees. Come on guys let's jump in them." Tommy said, standing up, as we all imagined it was fall and we were once again, outside, with big piles of colorful leaves surrounding us.

We jumped in the huge leaf piles, and then, as the wind picked up, we ran through the field, chasing after the leaves that were blowing through the air. We had fun giggling, and I could swear at a point, I could smell the crisp fall air, something I always enjoyed at that time of year. After doing this for a few minutes and catching our breath, as we had all run through the living room, getting our energy out, we sat back down on the floor, and Tommy rolled the ball to Dil.

"We're in outside space, exploring the planets." Dil said, as we closed our eyes, and I imagined I was inside a spaceship.

I could see the entire solar system before us, and Dil was captain of our ship.

"Let's go to Mars!" Dil said, heading in the direction of the giant red planet.

I just looked out the window of the spaceship, unsure of what to expect, but remaining calm and eager to check this out. Once we landed on Mars, we found ourselves, checking out the pink skyed planet, bouncing a bit, as the ground was like a trampaleen. I've never been on Mars, and I'm sure Dil hasn't either, so this was really fun, as we really got our imaginations flowing.

"There's a alium monster coming! A big green one, with red eyes! We'd better run!" Dil screamed.

We all screamed and ran back to the ship, where Dil put it into hyper drive and we saw to heading back to planet Earth. We got home and caught our breaths, as we came out of our imaginations, back in the living room, and Dil rolled the ball to Sabrina, who caught the ball and smiled.

"We're back in the field again, only this time, instead of a pile of freshly fallen leaves in the fall, it's spring time, and there's wild flowers everywhere!" Sabrina said, as we closed our eyes and I imagined it to be spring.

I only hoped no birds would come flying my way, as we ran through the fields of wild flowers, where Sabrina picked up some pink ones and handed them to Tommy.

"Here you go Tommy." Sabrina said, handing some flowers to him.

"Thanks Sabrina!" Tommy cried, taking the flowers from Sabrina.

All of the sudden, I was walking along, when a blue bird was hovering above my head, and was about to fly into my face.

"AAAHHH!" I screamed, ducking and trying to get away.

"What's wrong Nell?" Madeline asked.

"Birdy! Bad birdy! Go away!" I screamed.

I was then met by embarrassment, as I returned to Tommy and Dil's living room, having everybody staring and laughing at me.

"Stop it!" I screamed, covering my face in embarrassment.

"What's wrong Nell?" Tommy asked.

"Nell don't like birdies, they scare her." Madeline said.

"We think it's silly, right Maddi?" Sabrina asked.

"Yeah." Madeline replied.

"Yeah, birdies are cool!" Dil said.

"Yeah, Dilly's right, they aren't scary at all." Tommy said with a smile.

I uncovered my face and took some deep breaths, trying to calm down, hoping I didn't look like a fool, or better yet, Peter didn't see this.

"I'm afraid of birds because of something that happened to me when I was little." I explained, pointing to my cheek where there was a scar.

Everybody stared wide eyed at where I was pointing.

"Birdy hurt Nell?" Madeline asked.

"Yes, birdy hurt Nell." I replied.

"Birdy can't hurt Nell no more. It's okay." Madeline said.

Everybody else followed after her, coming over and giving me a group hug to help me feel better.

"Awe, thanks guys." I said, just as Peter called Tommy into the kitchen for his third dose of medicine for the day.

This time, he had it with a Reptar popcickle, but again, he spit it out into the garbage. I only hoped his parents could get him to take the medicine like he was suppose to, and that his illness wouldn't relaps and return, becoming worse later on in the week. Peter was about to scold Tommy, when we all heard the front door open, and footsteps enter the entry hallway.

"We're home!" A lady's voice called from the hallway.

Tommy and Dil ran out of the kitchen into the entry hall, where sure enough, Mr. and Mrs. Pickles were standing. The two little boys gave their parents a huge hug, and for the rest of the day, while my little sisters were sad that Tommy and Dil were more interested in spending time with their parents, I reminded them that their mommy and daddy have been gone an entire week, so it's only natural that they'd want to spend time with them. I was just glad everybody managed to giggle and have fun together, no more tears and fighting by the time the parentals had returned.

I then saw to helping Peter prepare dinner, and moving my stuff into the room where Sabrina and Madeline slept, so Mr. and Mrs. Pickles could have their room back to unpack and get settled back in. Eventually, dinner time came, and the chicken squares and medley of roasted vegetables, which consisted of broccoli, collyflower, carrots, asparigus, mushrooms, and red bell pepper, were quite delicious!

"These chicken squares are delicious!" I said.

"Thank you Helen. This recipe has been in my family for years, as my mother would say, she's known this recipe since her days when she was a girl in the old country, and her mother, being, my grandmother, would make them." Mrs. Pickles explained.

"I see." I said, taking another bite on my plate.

I don't think the kids liked them as much as the rest of us, but at least everybody was polite and at least tried them, and for that, I was proud of my sisters for being on their best behavior in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Pickles. They told us about their trip to Illinois, where poor Stu had to deal with some guy at the inventor's convention, who literally, ripped him off. Apparently, Stu took a couple of pieces of furniture he had invented a while back to show off at this event, a remote controlled sofa and an inflatable easy chair, which this man proceeded to go steal his designs, and the following day, showed up with an inflatable couch and a remote controlled easy chair, both of which, looked just like the items Mr. Pickles brought, and behaved in the same manner. Poor Stu spent most of his week in court, as the man was a local resident of the area, and he saw to pressing charges.

"So is the man doing jail time?" I asked.

"Yes." Mr. Pickles replied, in between fork fulls of roasted vegetables on his plate.

"And how did recycling the age decreaser go?" Peter asked.

"Fine, just fine, and it might be able to be put on display in the Smithonian eventually, but Paul would keep me informed about their interest." Mr. Pickles said.

"Age, Decreaser?" I asked with raised eyebrows, looking over at Peter.

"A project that Stu put together a while back. To make a long story short, he had originally invented this device to help his father. Famous psychologist, Doctor Lipschitz ended up being his test subject, and it turned out to be a bigger disaster than we intended it to be. I came to the rescue on this project, and we fixed everything in the end, but afterwards, the invention was never touched again, Stu's father eventually moved out, and, well, when he heard that somebody was coming to the convention who would recycle old inventions, we went through stuff downstairs, and got together several items he no longer wanted, that being one of them. And so, I helped him take it apart, he took it to Chicago, and the rest, is history, is that right Stu?" Peter asked.

Mr. Pickles shook his head, seeing he had his mouth full of food at the time. So I then turned my head to Mrs. Pickles.

"So how was your week in Springfield?" I asked.

"Well it was fine, though for the last day, I sadly, had to go to court to support Stu, so sadly, missed the final day of the Lipschitz seminar I was attending, but I did get some more great parenting advice, as well as advice to help me write the book I plan to write, seeing I now have my masters in Psychology." Mrs. Pickles said.

"Wow great!" I said, clearing my dishes from the table, as I was finished with my meal.

With Mr. and Mrs. Pickles back, they saw to getting their kids ready for bed. I never saw if Tommy took his bedtime dose of meds without spitting it out into the trash, because I was off, trying to give my sisters one final bath and trying to get most of our stuff packed, since we'd be leaving the following morning.

"Aren't you gonna go to bed Nell?" Sabrina asked, as she saw me crawling into bed with them with the Frozen book in my hands.

"Yes, but I'm sleeping with you girls tonight, since Tommy and Dil's mommy and daddy are back, so can't exactly sleep in their bed anymore." I said, scooting towards the middle of the bed, with my sisters on either side of me.

They kept wanting story after story in the Frozen book, which I read until I saw that a clock on the nightstand red midnight.

"Girls, we need to go to sleep, it's after midnight." I said, only to be met by silence.

I looked to either side of me, to see they had passed out while I was reading to them, so reached up, turned off the lamp that was above the bed, and went to sleep myself.

We awoke as sunlight came into the sky, and our final morning at the Pickles residence was pure chaos. I soon discovered that while Sabrina was a good girl, stashing away her dirty clothes in the bag I packed for her, Madeline, didn't exactly follow that rule. I soon discovered that she had hidden her clothes behind pieces of furniture all over the room, and under the bed. She kept giggling and found it funny, but I sure didn't, and made her go all over the room and help me pick up the dirty clothes and pack them into her bag. Once everything was packed, we headed downstairs to find that Peter was the only one awake. The girls wanted to wait for Tommy and Dil to get up to eat breakfast, to which I sadly told them no, as we had to leave in another hour and a half.

"Will you girls eat Reptar cereal this morning?" I asked.

"No!" They cried.

I sighed, looking at what else the cupboard had to offer.

"How about Zomby Brand?" I asked.

"The Louds stayed at my castle during the Christmas season, they absolutely love that cereal." Peter explained in between bites of his woffle.

"If those Loud kids from TV like it, then I guess, I can try it too." Madeline said.

"Me too!" Sabrina chimed in after her.

So I dished up bowls of cereal for my sisters, and one for myself, as while I'm not a huge cereal person, mainly because I ate a lot of it shortly after mama and papa died, seeing it was easy for me to fix for breakfast back in those days, I ate it anyway, since we were in a rush. At a point, Mr. and Mrs. Pickles walked sleepily into the kitchen and saw to making coffee for themselves. We didn't talk much, mainly because I was trying to make sure my sisters ate, and they seemed like the type of people who needed to wake up a bit before visiting with others, but once we finished, Peter agreed to clean up our dishes, while I marched my sisters back upstairs and got them dressed.

"But we wanna stay and play!" My sisters cried.

"I'm sorry girls, today's the day we're heading home." I said, brushing Madeline's hair and pulling it back into a ponytail.

To my surprise, they didn't pout, but rather, smiled. I think everybody was starting to miss home, and was looking forward to going back. While we were getting dressed, Tommy and Dil awoke, and no sooner had we gotten downstairs, when we heard a loud crash come from the living room, followed by Tommy crying.

"Oh no! Tommy!" Sabrina cried, trying to get out of my grip, as I was holding her hand.

I looked out the windows at the top of the front door, to see Peter's limo that was taking us back to Enchancia, had arrived.

"I'm sorry, we have to go." I said, scooting my sisters towards the front door.

I turned back and screamed towards the living room.

"Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Pickles!" I called, but I never received a response, just continuing to hear Tommy crying.

It's most likely they couldn't hear me over the sound of their oldest son crying, plus, when you're busy seeing what's the matter with one of your children, at points, it's like the rest of the world is nothing but a blur.

I got my sisters out to the limo and strapped in, and shortly after, Peter got into the vehicle, and we were heading off, towards home.

So finally, as I see to closing up this journal, before I turn it into my new parents, as we should be getting home shortly, as I see Peter has used the portal key, and glancing around, I see the familiar sights of Enchancia coming into view, I started reflecting back on the week I've had. I sure learned a lot about taking care of children, in particular, little boys. Both, boys and girls, can be quite a handful, especially the adventurous type, which, Tommy definitely was. And, little boys, like little girls, can be quite stubborn when they don't feel well, and even when they're starting to feel better when it comes to taking medicine. They can also be quite gullable, and I was pretty amazed by Peter's skills at getting Tommy to see that Reptar hadn't really died, though just the same, my condolences go out to the family of the man who played Reptar, and I do wish the Reptar Corperation the best of luck in finding a replacement to keep playing the beloved green dinosaur loved by so many kids, including my sisters to a degree, even though I can't say they like Reptar as much as the princesses from Frozen, but while Tommy and Madeline had their not so grateful moments throughout the week, I'm glad I got them playing a game together in the end that with the use of the power of imagination, got everybody smiling and laughing together in the end.

I also learned that while we can enjoy being of a higher rank, we shouldn't take our riches for granted. Rather, we should see to helping those less fortunate than us, just as I saw Peter do throughout the week, when it came to paying for that repair they needed done on their fridge, and learning about how he's helped Mr. Pickles with some of his inventions in the past. And bottom line, as tough as it was sometimes, I had a wonderful time, and I'm pleased that this babysitting gig, was my first villager's internship. I'm sure I'll have many more of these in the future, and I'm sure some of them will prove to be more challenging than others, but as long as I hold my head up high and have courage, I can get through anything.

End of Nell POV

And with that, she closed up her notebook, just as the limo entered into the Enchancia castle gates, and drove up towards the entrance.

"Girls, we're home." Nell said, shaking her sisters awake.

Madeline and Sabrina yawned and stretched, opening their eyes and smiling really big as they saw the sight of the castle appear out their windows.

"We're home!" Madeline squealed excitedly.

Sabrina quietly nodded, the smile never leaving her face.

Just then, Nell let out a little cough.

"Oh no, are you okay?" Madeline asked.

"I'm fine." Nell replied, though deep down, she wasn't feeling fine, but she wouldn't worry her sisters quite yet.

Soon, the limo came to a complete stop, and everybody piled out of the vehicle, as Peter and his driver, Arnie, got their bags and helped the three newest princesses into the castle with their luggage.

"Welcome home Helen, Sabrina and Madeline." Roland happily greeted, upon seeing them enter the castle.

"Daddy!" Madeline and Sabrina cried, running up to the king and hugging his legs.

Nell walked up to Miranda, quietly handing her the notebook, then, taking her bag from Peter, she headed up to her room, where she put her bag down, and flopped down on her bed, hoping to get some much deserved peace and quiet. She was also starting to feel worse and worse by the second, as she let out a few more coughs and sneezes, and fatigue saw to taking over her entire body.

" _Maybe I can get me a nap while Roland and Miranda look over my journal._ " Nell thought to herself, as the overly sick, exhausted teenage princess, leaned against her pillows, closed her eyes, and saw to taking a nap.

And this, ends the main story, of Nell's Adventures in Babysitting. So, what will Roland and Miranda have to say after reading her journal? Find out, in the last and final chapter of this story, that being, the epilogue.

Author's Note: That bit to have the kids play a game of using their imaginations was inspired by one of my favorite season 7 Rugrats episodes, Bigger than Life. Also, those inventions that Stu had copied at the convention, he actually created in a couple of episodes. The sofa appeared in, Grandpa's Date, while the chair appeared in, Super Hero Chuckie, and that age decreaser and the story behind it, was reference to a Fan Fiction story that's sadly, no longer on the site, called Sweet Baby Dr. Lipschitz, though while I'm sorry the story is no longer up for anybody to read, I'm not sorry the author who wrote it is gone, as he sadly, proved to not be a very nice person, so in that regard, I was fine having Stu recycle that machine, as a way to simply say, I'll no longer be referencing material from that cyber bullying troll, in any future stories, from here on out. Also, the bit where Tommy kept spitting his meds into the garbage, was taken from one of my fellow friends, who's dad kept doing the same at one time, though obviously for slightly different reasons than Tommy was obviously, and that's all I'll say about that. And as for the subplot where Tommy thought Reptar had died, that was originally, suppose to be a one-shot story I was going to release, to pay respect to the fact that we've lost so many celebraties in the past few years, and had Rugrats still been in production today, something like this might have come up on the show to keep up with the times, and to have one of those, miscommunications that Rugrats is so well-known for, and in my opinion, several of my favorite episodes involve such a concept, Autumn Leaves and Send in the Clouds being prime examples of this concept. Need me to explain further, just ask, I'll do that in a PM. And Tommy's line, "Okay, I suppose I can try," when he was unsure about playing the game that Nell had in mind, he says that in a couple of season 6 episodes, No Naps and Pedal Pusher come to mind, when he's not sure about doing the idea his friends are proposing, but decides to do it anyway. At least in this sense, Nell's plan got everybody to make up with one another and get along. Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope to be back with more stuff, sometime very soon!


	9. Epilogue, Studying the Journal

Chapter 9, Epilogue, Studying the Journal

That afternoon, Roland and Miranda sat in their throne room, studying the journal that Princess Helen had kept throughout the week, while unknowing to them, Madeline and Sabrina were off playing in the garden with Sofia, the rabbits, Clover and Ginger, and their new mousy friend named Stella, who Clover had taken in to raise as his own after her parents were destroyed by a fox. At first, Madeline didn't like Stella, but after she learned that she didn't mean to chew up her favorite stuffed fox toy, they soon became great friends, and Stella was happy to have her back, since to a small little mouse, a week without your friends feels like a lifetime. However, while Sabrina and Madeline were having a grand old time with Sofia and her collection of creatures, poor Nell was lying in bed, sick as a dog. As the sun was starting to set, the royal couple had reached the final page of the journal, after reading over the seven day stay Helen had at her villager's internship.

"Well, shall we go break the news to Helen that we approve of how she did at her week long internship, and I announce to her the news that Peter gave to me before he left?" Roland asked his wife.

"And what news was that again?" Miranda asked.

"About the big dinner we're putting on next Saturday night. I've invited King Peter, along with Mr. and Mrs. Stu and Didi Pickles, and their sons, Tommy and Dil, to a formal dinner event, where we can publically thank them for giving our oldest daughter the ability to do this special honor, and where I'll be presenting Helen with her first medal of villager's internship achievement." Roland explained.

Miranda stood up, noticing how quiet the castle seemed.

"Come to think of it, it is growing near dinner time, and it is awfully quiet, maybe we'd better go check on our kids." Miranda said, stepping out of the throne room, her husband following close behind her.

They were only a few steps out of their throne room, when Bailywick stopped them.

"Your royal hiness, you must take a look at Princess Helen right away, I do believe she might be ill." Bailywick said with concern.

"Right away sir." Roland said, as he and his wife headed up to Helen's room.

On the way there, Miranda quietly peered into Sofia's room, where Sofia, along with Sabrina and Madeline, were quietly sitting on her bed, coloring in coloringbooks, while Clover sat on the window sill next to Stella, the two of them, sharing a plate of carrots and cheese squares. Noticing that everybody there was at peace, she then stepped into Helen's room, where sure enough, the teenage princess was asleep, and had been at this point for several hours. Miranda quietly walked over to the bed, where she placed a head on Helen's forehead, and noticed it felt warm.

"Helen?" Miranda quietly whispered.

The princess's eyes fluttered open, only for a look of pain to cross her face.

"What's wrong?" Miranda asked.

Helen sat up, coughing, unable to get a word out, as tears of pain trickled down her cheeks. As this all happened, she was immediately reminded of a few days ago, when she witnessed this same reaction coming from Tommy. She gasp and covered her face.

"Oh no!" Helen whispered.

"So, looks like you caught what young Tommy had." Miranda said, checking Helen over, including looking into her mouth to see her throat looked red.

Helen slowly nodded her head, looking disappointed.

"Don't you worry, we'll have the royal doctor come tomorrow and hopefully, he'll have a cure for your illness." Roland said.

" _Yeah, that blue icky liquid that Tommy had to take._ " Helen thought to herself, as she saw to lying back down.

"I'll have Bailywick send up some warm chicken noodle soup for you to eat for dinner tonight, meanwhile, Roland, dear, want to tell Helen the good news?" Miranda asked, turning to her husband, who had perched himself on a nearby chair.

"Sure thing." Roland said, clearing his throat and standing up.

"Princess Helen, despite getting sick at the end of your villager's internship, which, is to be expected given the circumstances, your mother and I have finished reading your journal, and it sounds like you surely had your hands full. Two little boys, one of which, being sick, adventurous, going missing by sneaking off to school, getting hurt in the yard behind the house, and getting his head stuck in the banister. Sounds like you had quite a challenging week." Roland explained.

"Not to mention, witnessing this child being upset about, Reptar it was?" Miranda asked.

Helen nodded her head, hardly able to speak at this point.

"However, I see from reading the journal, that this was a very good fit for you. You clearly knew what you were doing, and when you didn't, you didn't hesitate to ask King Peter for help, and you even managed to keep your sisters more or less, under control." Roland said.

"I thought that game of make believe you played with your sisters and the boys yesterday was just, adorable." Miranda commented.

"We also have some more big news. You are going to be honored with a special medal for successfully completing your first villager's internship next Saturday night, at a dinner, hosted by us right here at home, and King Peter, along with the Pickles family, Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, and their boys, have been invited." Roland said.

"Hopefully we won't have to reschedule the dinner, but seeing it's a week away, if you stay in bed and rest, and do everything the doctor says, you should be feeling better in no time." Miranda said.

" _Of course I'll do what the doctor says. I'm no stubborn three-year-old boy, I'll take my yucky antibiotic for the ten days, four times a day I'm required to take it, thank you very much._ " Helen angrily thought to herself, rolling her eyes at her mother, looking a bit irritated.

"Now, you get some rest, Bailywick will be here shortly with some soup." Roland said.

"And no leaving your room. Not only are you sick and need rest, but you've earned yourself some rest after the week you've had. We'll see that Sofia, Amber, James, and Bailywick help tend to Madeline and Sabrina's needs." Miranda said, tucking Helen in and blowing her a kiss.

The king and queen then left the room, closing the door behind them, as Helen rolled over and went back to sleep, as the achy, sick princess, only found comfort in sleeping for the moment, but she wasn't surprised in the least. Surely this was bound to happen, seeing that while Tommy was ill, she took care of him the most. She was pleased that Queen Miranda and King Roland were pleased by how her week went, and how well she handled herself, and she only hoped she'd be well enough to attend next Saturday's celebration, and that it wouldn't have to be post poned. For now though, she decided to get some sleep, feeling overly exhausted from the week she had, both, happy to be home in her own bed again, but at the same time, feeling miserable with this illness she contracted from Tommy, she only hoped she'd be better in time.

The End

Author's Note: The OC of Stella the mouse, belongs to theblindwriter95, just take a look at her latest story of the same name, Stella, and you'll better understand where she came from. Thanks for reading, and I hope to be back with new stories, and updates to other stories, very soon.


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